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THE 



PHILOSOPHY 

OF 

MYSTERY. 



BY 

WALTER COOPER DENDY, 

FELLOW AND HONORARY LIBRARIAN OF THE M£;:TCAL SOCIETY OF 

LONDON ; SENIOR SURGEON TO THE ROYAL INFIRMARY 

FOR CHILDREN, &C, &C. 



NEW-YORK: 

HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, 
82 CLIFF STREET. 

18 47. 



% 6 ^ 



H ^t so fntreatetb tins serious anti terrible matter of Spir* 
Ues, tfyat uoto anb tijett fnsert^tifi some strange stories of eoun* 
tcrfci)ts, Uotl) botb bery iybcly btsplay tljeir faiseboob, aub also 
not a*Uttle recreate I;is rcaber : atib yet fit tfte enbe be so aptlj 
conclutrctb to tlje purpose, tijat W bystories seeme itot fble 
tales, or impertinent bajjarfes, but bery truetbes, naturallo 
fallius uubcr tfoe compasse of JjCs matter." 






CONTENTS. 



THE CHALLENGE. 

Scenery on the Wye.— A Ghost Seer.— Tintern Abbey.— Faith and Skep- 
ticism in the Reality of Phantoms Page 7-11 

NATURE AND MOTIVES OF GHOSTS. 

Notions of the Ancients regarding the Nature of Ghosts. — Confidence of the 
Ancients in their Appearance. — Modern Incidents in illustration of real 
Appearance. — Qualities of Ghosts. — Motives of Apparitions. — Ancient and 
modern Stories 12-23 

PROPHECY OF SPECTRES. 

Ancient spectral Prophecy. —Modern Stories in Illustration of prophetic 
Spectres. — Philosophy and Poesy of Shakspeare. — Holy Influence of Spec- 
tral Visitations. — Stories of apparently special Influence of the Deity 23-38 

ILLUSION OF SPECTRES. 

Reasons for early Faith in Phantoms. — Modern Errors regarding classic Su- 
perstitions. — Shallowness and Fallacy of modern Incidents. — Explanation 
of Ghost Stories by Coincidence. — Incidents in proof of Coincidence. — 
Proneness of intellectual Minds to credulity and Exaggeration. — Innocent 
Invention of an Incident at Bowood 39-56 

FANTASY FROM MENTAL ASSOCIATION. 

Influence of interesting Localities. — Definition of a Phantom. — An intense 
Idea. — Demonomania. — Stings of Conscience. — Curious Effect of peculiar 
Study or intense Thought. — Darkness and Obscurity. — Romance of Real- 
ity. — A mysterious Incident 56-71 

FANTASY FROM CEREBRAL EXCITEMENT. 

Second Sight. — National Propensity to the Sight. — Romance and Poetry of 
the Mountains. — Morbid Predisposition to Second Sight. — Unearthly 
Visions on the eve of Dissolution. — Glimpses of Reason in dying Mani- 
acs 71-83 

FANTASY FROM CEREBRAL CONGESTION. 

Phantoms of intellectual Minds. — Illusion of Opium. — Illustrations of Nar- 
cotic Influence 84-92 

POETIC FANTASY, OR PHRENSY. 

Inspiration of Poesy and Painting. — Skakspeare. — Fuseli. — Blake. — Philos- 
ophy and Madness. — Illusion of Tasso. — Truth of Poesy. — Splendid Illu- 
sions at the onset of Mania.— Melancholy Constitution and Decay of Po ■ 
etic Minds. — Letter of a Cheromaniac. — Sensibility. — Unhappy Conse- 
quences of cherishing Romance. — Fragment of John Keats 93-104 



IV CONTENTS. 



FANTASY FROM SYMPATHY WITH THE BRAIN. 

Philosophy of Moral Causes. — Effect of Thought and of the Function of the 
Stomach in producing physical Changes in the Brain. — Stories in Proof 
of this Influence. — Illusions from Derangements of Vision. — Curious Cases 
of ocular Spectra from peculiar Conditions of the Eye. ... Page 104-116 

MYSTERIOUS FORMS AND SIGNS. 
Stories of Supernatural Appearances 116-126 

ANALYSIS AND CLASSIFICATION OF SPECTRAL ILLU- 
SION. 

Credulity. — Arrangement of Causes of Spectral Illusion. — Illustration of 
Atmospheric Illusions. — Natural Phenomena. — Fata Morgana.— Schat- 
tenman of the Brocken. — Romance of unlettered Minds 126-144 

ILLUSIONS OF ART. 

Monkish Impostures.— Optical Toys.— Spontaneous Combustion. . 144-149 

ILLUSTRATION OF MYSTERIOUS SOUNDS. 

Elemental Causes. — Impositions at Woodstock. — Tedworth. — Cock Lane.— 
Subterranean Sounds. — Currents of Air. — Memnon. — Phonic Instru- 
ments. — Vocal Curiosity in young Richmond 149-157 

FAIRY MYTHOLOGY. 

Origin of Faery. — Legends of the Mythology of various Climes. — Cauld Lad 
of Hilton 157-167 

DEMONOLOGY. 

Classic and Indian Mythology. — Imbodying of a Demon. — Stories Illustra 
tive of the Superstitions of Ireland and Cornwall. — Legend of the Change- 
lings. — Poetry of Nature. — Preadamite Beings 168-179 

NATURE OF SOUL AND MIND 

Psychology of the Greeks and of the Moderns. — Essence of Phrenology. — 

Lord Brougham. — Priestley. — Paley. — Johnson. — Modes of Sepulture. 

{ — Paradise.— Atheism.— Deity.— Hindoo Mythology.— Senile Intellect 

179-194 
NATURE OF SLEEP. 

Unconsciousness of Sleep. — Necessity of Slumber. — Malady of Collins.— 
Somnolency of the Brute and of Savages. — Periods of Sleep. — Sleepless- 
ness and its Antidotes 195-206 

SUBLIMITY AND IMPERFECTION OF DREAMING. 

Unconsciousness of the Dream. — Arguments on this Question. — Episode of 
a dreaming Life 206-215 

PROPHECY OF DREAMS. 

Ancient Prophetic Dreams. — Stories of modern Prophecies in Dreaming 

215-223 



CONTENTS. 



MORAL CAUSES OF DREAMING. 

Associations of Dreaming. — Incongruous Combinations. — Source of Ideas 
in Dreams. — Innate Idea.— Undreaming Minds. — Flitting of the Spirit. — 
Fallacy of Mental Energy in the Dream. — Illusion of Dreams. — Mar- 
montel 223-236 

ANACHRONISM AND COINCIDENCE OF DREAMS. 

Celerity of Ideas in the Dream. — Sacred Records of Dreams. — Danger of 
profane Discussion of Scripture.— Fallacy of Dreams. — Consequences of 
Credulity in Dreams 236-256 

MATERIAL CAUSES OF DREAMS. 

Blending of Metaphysics and Philosophy.— Confusion of ancient and mod- 
ern Classifications of Dreams. — Curious Cases of suspended Memory. — 
Auecdotes of Tenacity of Memory. — Physiology of Memory. — Ghost of an 
amputated Limb 257-269 

INTENSE IMPRESSION. MEMORY. 

Curious Cases of Associations. — Deranged Memory. — Dreams of Animals. 
—Poetic Illustrations 269-279 

INFLUENCE OF DARK BLOOD IN THE BRAIN. 

Conditions of the Brain. — Analogy of Dreaming and Mania. — Sympathetic 
Causes of Dreaming. — Repletion. — Effects of Posture in inducing Dreams. 
—Phrenological Illustrations 280-293 

INCUBUS, OR NIGHTMARE. 

Illustrative Incidents.— Nightmare of the Mind 294-302 

SOMNILOQUENCE. SOMNAMBULISM. 

Stories of Sleep-talking. — Stories of Sleep-walking. — Changes of Disposi- 
tion in Somnambulism. — Abeyance of Memory during the Interval. — Ex- 
actness and Energy during Somnambulism.— Concentration of Power. — • 
Unconsciousness.— Analysis of Sleep-waking.— Theory of Reflex Action 
of the Nervous System. — Irresistibility.— Disease of the Brain in Som- 
nambulists 302-327 

IMITATIVE MONOMANIA. 

Dance of the Middle Ages.— Tarantulism.— Saint Vitus's Dance.— Tigre- 
tier.— Lycanthropy.— Fanaticism during the Commonwealth.— Moravi- 
ans.— The Kent Tragedy.— Stories of Imitative Suicide.— Effects of Stra- 
monium, and of Gaseous Inhalation 327-339 

RE VERY. 

Abstraction of Idiocy.— Cretinism.— Wandering of the Mind.— Concentra 
tiveness.— Anecdotes Illustrative of Illusive Abstraction 340-352 

ABSTRACTION OF INTELLECT. 

Anecdotes in Illustration, — Brown Study. — Apathy. — Heroism. — Revery of 
Philosophy.— Sonata di Diavolo,— Revery at Caerphilly.— Intense Impres- 
sion.— Abstraction of Deep Study.— Revery of the Dying 352-365 



VI CONTENTS. 



SOMNOLENCE. TRANCE. CATALEPSY 

Description of Trance. — Leg-ends of Deep Sleepers. — Stories of Modern 
Trances. — Analogies from Intense Impression. — Periodical Catalepsy 

365-376 

PREMATURE INTERMENT. RESUSCITATION. 

Stories in Illustration. — Romance, Life in Death.— Causes of Resuscitation. 
— Disunion of Mind and Body.— Insensibility of the Decollated Head. — 
Sensations during Hanging and Drowning. — Case of Dr. Adam Clarke 

376-391 

TRANSMIGRATION. ANALYSIS OF TRANCE. 

State of the Spirit after Death. — Fables of Transmigration. — Superstition 
in India and England. — Tenacity of Life. —Hybernation. — Sleep of Plants. 
—Physiology of Trance 391-402 

MESMERISM. 

Its Origin. — Commissions for its Investigation. — Caspar Hauser. — Sensa- 
tions of Magnetism. — Magnetized Trees. — Operations during Magnetic 
Trance. — Transference of Senses. — Mineral Traction. — Clairvoyance. — 
Trance of Santa Theresa. — Prophetess of Prevorst. — Magnetic Aura. — 
Personal Sympathy. — Socrates. — Fascino. — Prince Hohenlohe 403-429 

SIBYLLINE INFLUENCE. 

Occult Science. — A Gipsy. — Spells and Charms. — Relics. — Ordeals. — Phi- 
losophy of Prophetic Fulfilment. — Melancholy Effects of Prophecy. — As- 
trology. — Conclusion 429-442 



THE 



PHILOSOPHY OF MYSTERY, 



THE CHALLENGE. 

" There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, 
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy." — Hamlet. 

There was a shallop floating on the Wye, among 
the gray rocks and leafy woods of Chepstow. With- 
in it were two fair girls reclining: : the one blend- 
ing the romantic wildness of a maid of Italy with 
the exquisite purity of English nature ; the other 
illuming with the devotion of a vestal the classic 
beauty of a Greek. 

There was a young and learned bachelor sitting 
at the helm. Study had stamped an air of thought- 
fulness on his brow ; yet a smile was ever playing 
on his lips, as his heart felt the truth and influence 
of the beautiful life around him. 

Listen, gentle reader, we pray thy courtesy and 
thy patience, as a rude, unskilful pen traces the 
breathed thoughts of these wanderers of the Wye. 

Castaly. We have roamed, dear Ida, among 
the classic lands of the far-off Mediterranean : we 
have looked from her pinnacles of snow on the sil- 
very gleaminess of Switzerland, and from purple 
sierras on the sunny splendour of Spain ; yet these 
English meadows, with their fringes of wild bloom, 
come o'er the heart with all the freshness of an in- 
fant's dream. Yon majestic crag of Wyndcliff is 
flinging its purple shadows athwart the water, and 



8 THE CHALLENGE. 

floods of golden glory are streaming through the 
beech-woods of Piercefield ; and see, our little sail, 
white as the wing of a swan, is wafting us towards 
Abbey Tintern, along this beautiful valley, where 
the river almost doubles on itself; meandering 
among its mead-flowers and its mosses, as loth to 
leave its luxuriant bed. Listen ! the breath of 
evening is among the trees that dip in the ripple of 
the Wye their leaves of shivering gold. What a 
scene for minions of the moon to revel in! Say, 
shall we charm the lingering hours of this midsum- 
mer night among the ivied cloisters of the abbey % 
But where is Astrophel, our moon-struck student, 
who, like Chaucer's scholar, keeps 

" at his bed's head, 
A twenty books clothed in black and red, 
Of Aristotle and his philosophy ?-" 

They have not taught him courtesy, or he would 
not steal away from the light of our eyes to com- 
mune with owls and ivy-bushes. 

Yet we promise him our smile for your sake, 
Evelyn. Indeed, I am thinking his mysteries will 
chime in admirably with the solemnity of this lone 
abbey. We appoint him master of our revels. 

Evelyn. Let your smile be in pity, fair Castaly, 
on the illusions of Astrophel. Ensconced in his dark 
closet, within a charmed ring of black-letter folios, 
he has wofully warped his studies, and has read 
himself into the belief that he is a gifted seer. 
Yet love him, lady, for his virtues ; for his history 
is a very paradox. His heart is melting with char- 
ity for the beings of earth, yet his mind is half 
weaned from their fellowship. At his imminent 
peril, he leaps into the Isis to save a drowning boy, 
and the world calls him misanthrope withal. It 
is the fate indeed of many a cloistered scholar, 
whose 



THE CHALLENGE. 9 

" desires are dolphin like, 
And soar above the element they live in." 

Such is Astrophel. 

Ida. He looks his part to perfection. There is 
a shadowy expression in his dark eye, as it were 
poring over the volume of his own thoughts. Be- 
neath the slender shaft of yon eastern window, be- 
hold this proselyte to the sublime science of shad- 
ows. He approaches. 

Ev. The hour is on him yet. Astrophel ! 

Astrophel. Whisper, and tread lightly, Evelyn, 
for this is haunted ground. Underneath this vel- 
vet turf rest the mouldering bones of a noble. I 
have held communion in my slumber with the spirit 
by which they were once animated and moved; 
and the mysteries of the tomb have been unfolded 
to me. The eidolon of Roger Bigod has thrice 
come across my sight. 

Cast. A ghost! 

Ev. And Astrophel believes the truth of this vis- 
ion ! Such fantasy might well become the Cister- 
cian monks, who once stalked along these gloomy 
cloisters, but not an Oxford scholar. 

Astr. And why not an Oxford scholar, Evelyn? 
I do believe in the existence of beings out of the 
common course of nature ; and, indeed, the history 
of the world has ever proved the general leaning 
to this belief, and my own mind feels that this uni- 
versal adoption is a proof of reality of existence. 
Smile at or reason with me, you will not shake 
my faith, for I believe it true ; and even Johnson 
confessed, that " although all argument might be 
against it, yet all belief is for it." 

Ev. The diffusion of this fallacy, Astrophel, 
proves only the universal sameness of the constitu- 
tion of mind. You may, indeed, cite the high au- 

ority of Johnson, that " a belief in the apparitions 



10 THE CHALLENGE. 

of the dead could become universal onlyby its truth." 
Yet, if this one word apparition be rightly inter- 
preted, it will not imply the existence of real phan- 
toms, however ethereal, before the eye, for the no- 
tion so construed would have been a grand error of 
Imlac ; no, he adopts* an indefinite expression, con- 
scious that mere metaphysics were not illustrative, 
of this subtle question. 

There was one Theophilus Insulanus, who, I 
think, calls all those who have not faith in phan^ 
toms irreligious, because, forsooth, " these ghosts 
are never employed on subjects of frivolous con- 
cern." I may be under the ban of this flimsy en- 
thusiast, but you will not gain me as a proselyte, 
Astrophel, for, like our great poet, I have seen too 
many ghosts myself. 

Yet I know some few self-created wizards, who 
have solved to their hearts' content those two grand 
mysteries, the real existence and the purpose of 
ghostly visitations ; who, like Owain Glyndwr, 
" can call spirits from the vasty deep," and even 
expect that they will " come when they do call for 
them." Others have laboured under self-glamou- 
rie, and believed themselves magicians, until put 
to the proof. I remember the painter, Richard Cos- 
way, was under this illusion ; and when the old cyn- 
ic Northcote desired him to raise Sir Joshua' Rey- 
nolds, the pseudo-magus confessed himself foiled 
by advancing this simple excuse, " I would, were 
it not sinful /" 

It were well if these monomaniacs were laid in 
the famous bed of St. Hilary at Poictiers ; for there, 
with the muttering of a^prayer or two, as the le- 
gend tells us, madmen may be cured. 

But, in truth, the light of divine reason has so 
far dispelled these fancies for the supernatural, that 
very few of us, I presume, are confident in the hope 



THE CHALLENGE. 11 

of raising a ghost when we want one ; or of laying 
it in the Red Sea for a hundred years, by two cler- 
gymen, with "bell, book, and candle," and scraps 
of mystic Latin, when it becomes rude or trouble- 
some. 

Ida. Will you not concede that many visionaries 
have believed, and written from pure and even holy 
motives 1 

Ev. There is no doubt of this, lady ; yet while it 
has fanned the flame of superstition in minds of low- 
er intellect, with many, the endeavour to prove too 
much has marred these motives, and weakened faith, 
even in the credulous ; so that we may hope the 
wild romances of Beaumont, and Burthogge, and 
Baxter, and Aubrey, and Glanville, and that arch- 
mystagogue Moreton (whose book is half full of 
prolix dialogues between ghosts and ghost-seers), 
will soon be mere objects of interest and curiosity 
to the black-letter bibliomaniac and the more eru- 
dite legend-hunter. 

Cast. We will not submit to your anathema, Eve- 
lyn. This learned clerk has challenged our faith. 
What a treasury of secrets might he unfold to us 
from the mystic tomes of antiquity, the wonders of 
profane psychology; from the tales of Arabia to Va* 
theck and the Epicurean, from the classic mythol- 
ogy of Homer to the wild romances of his humble 
prototype Ossian. 

Let it be a match : we will listen, Astrophel, 
while you " unsphere the spirit of Plato ;" and here 
we sit in judgment, on the velvet throne of this our 
court of T intern. 



12 NATURE OP GHOSTS. 



NATURE AND MOTIVES OF GHOSTS. 

" In the most high and palmy state of Rome, 
A little ere the mightiest Julius fell, 
The graves stood tenantless, and the sheeted dead 
Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets." 

Hamlet, 4to B. 

Astr. It is not from the sources of mythology 
alone that I adduce my illustrations of the reality 
of ghosts, but from the myriads of incidents which 
ancient and modern history record. Yet may I 
well crave your courtesy for the scraps of fable, 
and perchance of imposture, that may unwittingly 
creep into my discourse. Listen to me. 

It was believed by the ancients that each body 
possessed three ghosts — to be released on its dis- 
solution. The manes at once emigrated to the re- 
gion of Pluto ; the spiritus ascended to the skies ; 
the umbra or shade still wandered on the earth ; or, 
as the poet has more comprehensively sung, 

" Bis duo sunt homini, manes, caro, spiritus, umbra ; 
Quatuor ista loci bis duo suscipiunt : 
Terra tegit carnem, tumulum circumvolat umbra, 
Orcus habet manes, spiritus astra petit." 

Meaning that there are four principles in man, and 
this is their destiny : the flesh to earth ; the ghost 
to the tomb ; the soul to Hades ; and the spirit to 
heaven. 

The Queen of Carthage, confiding in this creed, 
threatens iEneas that her umbra will haunt him 
upon earth, while her manes will rejoice in his tor- 
ments. 

The notions of other mystic scholars are thus re- 
corded by old Burton in his " Anatomy of Melan- 
choly ;" as those of Surius, " that there be certain 
monsters of hell and places appointed for the pun- 
ishment of men's souls, as at Hecla in Iceland, 
where the ghosts of dead men are familiarly seen, 



NATURE OP GHOSTS. 13 

and sometimes talk with the living. Saint Greg- 
ory, Durand, and the rest of the schoolmen derive 
as much from iEtna in Sicily, Lipara, Hiera, and 
those volcanoes in America, and that fearful Mount 
Hecklebergin Norway, where lamentable screeches 
and howlings are continually heard, which strike a 
terror to the auditors : fiery chariots are continual- 
ly seen to bring in the souls of men in the likeness 
of crows, and devils ordinarily goe in and out." 
And then, to bring this fantasy to a climax by a 
pandemonium of ghosts, listen to Bredenbachius, 
in his " Perigranions in the Holy Land," where 
" once a yeare dead bodies arise about March, and 
walk, and after a while hide themselves again : 
thousands of people come yearly to see them." 
And this reminds me of the phantom of old Booty, 
who, at the hour of his death in England, was seen 
by the crew of a ship running into the crater of 
Stromboli in the remote Mediterranean — a story 
which even in the present century was made the 
subject of discussion in a justice court. 

Now, you must know, the ancients believed that 
only those who died of the sword possessed this 
privilege. 

These are the words of Flavius Josephus : " What 
man of virtue is there that does not know that those 
souls which are severed from their fleshly bodies in 
battles by the sword are received by the ether, that 
purest of elements, and joined to that company 
which are placed among the stars : that they be- 
come good demons and propitious heroes, and show 
themselves as such to their posterity afterward ; 
while upon those souls that wear away in and with 
their distempered bodies comes a subterranean 
night to dissolve them to nothing, and a deep ob- 
livion to take away all the remembrance of them ? 
And this, notwithstanding they be clean from all 
B 



14 NATURE OF GHOSTS. 

spots and defilements of this world ; so that in this 
case the soul, at the same time, comes to the utmost 
bounds of its life, and of its body, and of its memo- 
rial also." 

The mystery of the nature of these ghosts I may 
not presume to define ; but there are many learned 
writers of antiquity who believed in their material- 
ity, and broached the intricate question of their 
quality and formation. 

The alchymist Paracelsus writes of the astral 
element or spirit, one of the two bodies which com- 
pose our nature : being more ethereal, it survived 
some time after the death of the more substantial 
form, and sometimes became the familiar spirit of 
the magician. And what writes Lucretius the Epi- 
curean to illustrate his credence in apparitions 1 
That the surfaces of bodies are constantly thrown 
off by a sort of centrifugal force ; that an exact im- 
age is often presented to us by this surface coming 
off, as it were, entire, like the cast skin of the rattle- 
snake or the shell of the chrysalis ; and thus the 
ideas of our absent or departed friends strike on the 
mind. 

The olden chymists, in the age of Louis XIV., 
accounted for spectral forms by the saline atoms of 
a putrid corpse being set free, and combining again 
in their pristine form. Listen, I pray you, to this 
grave philosophy of an abstruse essay, written in 
1794. 

" The apparitions of souls departed do, by the 
virtue of their formative plastic power, frame unto 
themselves the vehicles in which they appear out 
of the moisture of their bodies. So ghosts do often 
appear in churchyards, and that but for a short 
time, to wit, before the moisture is wholly dried up." 

" Such are those thick and gloomy shadows damp, 
Oft seen in charnel-vaults and sepulchres, 
Lingering and sitting by a new-made grave." 



NATURE OF GHOSTS. 15 

And we read in the Chronicles that " during 
the time the ancients burned, not buried their 
dead, there was no such appearance of ghosts as is 
now." 

Why waves the coarse grass ranker over the 
grave % It is touched by the larva of the rotting 
carcass, which, ascending from its putrid chrys- 
alis a butterfly or Psyche, flits a while like an 
ephemera,, and drops again into the vault. 

A sentiment something like this, I believe, was 
the grand cause of the enrolment of the mummies 
by the Egyptians ; for they thought while the body 
remained entire, the soul was flitting about it : 
and the early Christians even believed that a por- 
tion, at least, of the soul remained uncorrupted by 
the body. 

Evelyn will grant that among the Romans there 
was a devout wish to be buried near venerated 
beings and saints, an emanation from whose bodies, 
they believed, would inspire the hearts of the be- 
lievers. 

And here I will relate a story from the Dinan 
Journal of 1840, and also the fragment of a very 
mysterious tale, told with all the solemnity of a 
faithful chronicle : 

" We had the curious spectacle of a long pro- 
cession of girls from Pleudiheus, passing through 
our streets to the chapel of St. Anne, to offer up 
prayers for the repose of the soul of the mother 
of one of them, who has been dead twenty-two 
years, and who every five years has appeared to 
her daughter, urging her to have masses said for 
her. This time the troubled spirit prescribed the 
day, hour, and place of the service, and even the 
precise dresses she would have the votaries wear. 
Consequently, they were all lightly clothed in 
white, although the rain fell and the streets were 



16 NATURE OF GHOSTS. 

full of mud. Some of the inhabitants of Dinan 
affirm that they saw the ghost of the deceased 
marching at the head of the procession to the door 
of the chapel, where it remained till the mass was 
finished, and then suddenly vanished." 

Returning from the harbour to Cadiz with some 
Spanish donas, the Baron Geramb heard a voice 
in French, crying, " Save me ! Help, help !" but 
at the time he took little or no heed of the mat- 
ter. On the morrow was seen on the shore of 
the harbour a body on a black board, with lighted 
tapers by its side, which was covered by the baron's 
direction. During a tempest in the evening, some 
secret impulse directed him again to the shore. 
Before his bewildered sight arose from the spot a 
shapeless phantom, wrapped in the black winding- 
sheet which he had provided. 

The phantom moved along with gigantic strides, 
assuming a globular form, and then, whirling in 
spiral circles, bounded off, and appeared at a dis- 
tance like a giant. The spectre led the baron to 
the streets of Cadiz, its course being accompanied 
by a noise as of the tinkling of autumnal leaves. 
In Cadiz a door suddenly opened with force, and 
the spectre rushed like lightning into the house 
and plunged into the cellar. There was the sound 
of deep groaning, and the baron descended into 
the vault : there lay the corpse, naked and livid, 
and on it was prostrated an aged man, uttering the 
deep sighs of abject misery and despair. In a 
gloomy corner of this cave of death leaned the 
phantom, revolving in its spiral whirls, and then 
changing to a floating cloud of light ; and then 
there beamed forth the pale features of a youth ; 
undulating as if on the bosom of a wave, which 
murmured in the ear. Then came the chanting 
pf anthems and prayers for the dead, and a glitter- 



NATURE OF GHOSTS. 17 

ing young girl in white robes glided into the cellar 
and knelt in devotion by the body. 

The phantom — and so the legend proceeds. 

There is a wondrous mystery, I grant, envelop- 
ing this story ; but if there be any truth in that 
alchymic reanimation, Palingenesy — 

" If chemists from a rose's ashes fc>~ 

Can raise the rose itself in glasses ;" 

nay, if the sparkling diamond shines forth from a 
mass of charcoal, why may not the ashes of a body 
be made into a ghost, illustrative of the philosophy 
of substantial apparitions, adopted by Kircher — a 
body rebuilt, after being resolved for a time into 
its constituent elements 1 The Parisian alchymists 
of the seventeenth century, indeed, demonstrated 
this mystery, and raised a phoenix from its ashes. 
They submitted to the process of distillation some 
earth from the cemetery of the Innocents, during 
which ceremony they were scared by the appear- 
ance of perfect human shapes struggling in the 
glass vessels they were employing. And, lastly, 
Dr. Ferriar thus deposes : A ruffian was executed, 
his body dissected, and his scull pulverized by an 
anatomist. The student, who slept in the chamber 
of experiment, saw, in the night-time, a progressive 
getting together of the fragments, until the crimi- 
nal became perfect and glided out at the door. 

And here is a legend of deeper mystery still. 

There was a merry party collected in a town in 
France, and among all the gay lords and ladies 
there assembled there was none who caused so 
great a sensation as a beautiful young lady, who 
danced, played, and sang in the most exquisite 
style. There were only two unaccountable cir- 
cumstances belonging to her : one was, that she 
never went to church or attended family prayers ; 
the other, that she always wore a slender black 
2 B2 



18 NATURE OF GHOSTS. 

velvet band or girdle round her waist. She waa 
often asked about these peculiarities, but she al- 
ways evaded the interrogatories, and still, by hei 
amiable manners and beauty, won all hearts. One 
evening, in a dance, her partner saw an oppor- 
tunity of pulling the loop of her little black girdle 
behind : it fell to the ground, and immediately the 
lady became pale as a sheet, then gradually shrunk 
and shrunk, till at length nothing was to be seen 
in her place but a small heap of gray ashes. 

And what think you now, Evelyn ? 

Ev. I think your candle burned very blue, As- 
trophel, when you were poring over these mid- 
night legends ; yet I believe I may by-and-by 
explain the story of your Lady of the Ashes — all, 
excepting the mystery of the sable girdle. But 
methinks you should not have stopped short of the 
qualities by which we may recognise the genus of 
these phantoms. There was once, as I have heard, 
a ghost near Cirencester, which vanished in a very 
nice perfume and a melodious twang, and Master 
Lilly therefore concluded it to be a fairy : and 
Propertius, I know, writes of another ; and he de- 
cided that the scent diffused on her disappearance 
proclaimed her to be a goddess ! Glanville has 
set himself to argue upon, nay, demonstrate all 
questions regarding materiality and immateriality, 
and the nature of spirits ; puzzling us with math- 
ematical diagrams, and occupying fifteen chapters 
on the nature of the witch of Endor : and Andrew 
Moreton, too, in his " Secrets," comments, with 
pedantic profanation, on the "infernal paw-wawi?ig 
of this condemned creature." Coleridge, and even 
Sir Walter, who had a mighty love of legends, 
propose a question, whether she was a ventriloquist 
or an aristocratic fortune-teller, or an astrologer 
or a gipsy, imposing on the credulity of Saul. And 



NATURE OF GHOSTS. 19 

yet that same Sir Walter very shrewdly suggested 
to Sir William Gell the manufacture of a ghost 
with a thin sheet of tin, painted white, so that by 
half a turn the spectre would instantly vanish. 

Cast. A ghost, I believe, according to the rules 
of fantasy, ought to be without matter or form, or, 
indeed, any sensible properties. Yet are very se- 
rious tales related of guns bursting when fired at 
them, and swords broken by their contact, and of 
loud voices issuing from filmy phantoms, through 
which the moonbeams are seen to glimmer. A 
spirit ought, of course, to communicate with us in 
another way than that which we know, and possess 
those ethereal faculties of creeping through chinks 
or keyholes, and of resuming its airy form, like the 
sylph of Belinda, when the " glittering forfex'"' had 
cut it in twain. An exquisite morceau of such a 
phantom just now flits across my memory. It is 
of two old ladies dwelling in two border castles 
in Scotland. One of these dames was visited by 
the spectre bust of a man, and the other by the 
lower half of him. Which had the better bargain 
I know not, but I believe — 

Astr. Nay, it were not difficult, lady, to over- 
whelm me with tales like yours — the idle and un- 
meaning gossip of a winter's night ; but there are 
many spectral visitations so intimately associated 
with events, that the faculty even of prophecy can- 
not be doubted. Bodine, as Burton writes, is fully 
satisfied that " these souls of men departed, if cor- 
poreal, are of some shape, and that absolutely 
round, like sun and moone, because that is the 
most perfect form ; that they can assume other 
aerial bodies, all manner of shapes at their pleas- 
ure, appear in what likeness they will themselves ; 
that they are most swift in motion, can pass many 
miles in an instant and so likewise transform bod- 



20 MOTIVES OF GHOSTS. 

ies of others into what form they please, and, with 
admirable celerity, remove them from place to 
place ; that they can represent castles in the ayre, 
armies, spectrums, prodigies, and such strange ob- 
jects to mortal men's eyes ; cause smells, savours, 
deceive all the senses, foretel future events, and 
do many strange miracles." 

.Then the eccentric Francis Grose has thus 
summed up many of their wondrous attributes : 

" The spirit of a person deceased is either com- 
missioned to return for some especial errand, such 
as the discovery of a murder, to procure restitution 
of lands, or money unjustly withheld from an or- 
phan or widow ; or, having committed some injus- 
tice while living, cannot rest till that is redressed. 
Sometimes the occasion of spirits revisiting this 
world is to inform their heir in what secret place 
or private drawer in an old trunk they had hid 
the title-deeds of the estate, or where, in trouble- 
some times, they had buried the money and plate. 
Some ghosts of murdered persons, whose bodies 
have been secretly buried, cannot be at ease till 
their bones have been taken up and deposited in 
sacred ground, with all the rites of Christian burial." 
The ghost of Hamlet's father walked on the plat- 
form at Elsineur to incite his son to revenge his 
murder ; and many modern phantoms have, enli- 
vened the legends of our local histories, bent on 
the same mysterious errand. 

The mythology of the ancients, and the fairy 
superstition of our own land, are also replete with 
legends of these apparitions. The rites of sepul- 
ture were essential for the repose of the manes. If 
the body was not quietly entombed, the soul was 
wandering on the banks of Styx for one hundred 
years ere it was permitted Charon to ferry it 
across the river. Thus spoke the shade of Patro- 
clus to Achilles in his dream : 



MOTIVES OP GHOSTS 21 

"Thou sleep'st, Achilles, and Patroculus, erst 
Thy best beloved, in death forgotten lies. 
Haste, give me burial : I would pass the gates 
Ol Hades, for the shadows of the dead 
Mow drive me from their fellowship afar." 

And this js a prevailing sentiment among the North 
American Indians : 

'• The bones of our countrymen lie uncovered, 
their bloody bed has not been washed clean, their 
spirits cry against us : they must be appeased." 

In the letter of Pliny the consul to Sura, we 
learn that there was at Athens a house haunted by 
a chain-rattling ghost. Athenodorus, the philoso- 
pher, hired the house, determined to quiet the rest- 
less spirit. " When it grew towards evening, he 
ordered a couch to be prepared for him in the fore- 
part of the house, and after calling for a light, to- 
gether with his pencil and tablets, he directed all 
his people to retire. The first part of the night 
passed in usual silence, when at length the chains 
began to rattle. However, he neither lifted up 
his eyes nor laid down his pencil, but diverted his 
observation by pursuing his studies with greater 
earnestness. The noise increased, and advanced 
nearer, till it seemed at the door, and at last in the 
chamber. He looked up and saw the ghost ex- 
actly in the manner it had been described to him : 
it stood before him beckoning with the finger. 
Athenodorus made a sign with his hand that it 
should wait a little, and threw his eyes again upon 
his papers ; but the ghost still rattling his chains in 
his ears, he looked up and saw him beckoning him 
as before. Upon this he immediately arose, and, 
with the light in his hand, followed it. The spec- 
tre slowly stalked along as if encumbered with his 
chains, and, turning into the area of the house, sud- 
denly vanished. Athenodorus, being thus desert 
ed, made a mark with some grass and leaves where 



22 MOTIVES OF GHOSTS. 

the spirit left him. The next day he gave informa- 
tion to the magistrates, and advised them to order 
that spot to be dug up. This was accordingly done, 
and the skeleton of a man in chains was there found ; 
for the body, having lain a considerable time in the 
ground, was putrified, and had mouldered away 
from the fetters. The bones, being collected to- 
gether, were publicly buried; and thus, after the 
ghost was appeased by the proper ceremonies, the 
house was haunted no more." 

Yet, not only to entreat the rites of sepulture, the 
phantom will walk according to some law of those 
beings remote from the fellowship of human nature 
— it may be to obtain readmission to that earth from 
which it was, by some fairy spell, in exile. 

In the wilds of Rob Roy's country, there is many 
a Highlander believing still the traditions of the 
Daoine Shi, or Men of Peace ; and among the le- 
gends of Aberfoyle there is one phantom tale that 
is apropos to my illustrations. 

There was one Master Robert Kirke. He was 
one evening taking his night walk on a fairy hill, 
or dunshi, in the vicinity of his manse. On a sud- 
den he fell to the ground, struck, as it appeared to 
many, by apoplexy ; the seers, however, believed 
it to be a trance inflicted on him by the fairy peo- 
ple for thus invading the sacred bounds of their 
kingdom. After the interment, the phantom of the 
minister appeared to one of his relatives, and de- 
sired him to go to Grahame of Duchray, his cousin, 
and assure him that he was not dead, but was at 
that time a prisoner in elf land, and the only mo- 
ment in which the fairy charm could be dissolved 
was at the christening of his posthumous child. 
The counter-spell was this : that Grahame should 
be present at the baptism, holding a dish in his hand, 
and that when the infant was brought, he should 



PROPHECY OF SPECTRES. 23 

throw the dish over the phantom, the appearance 
of which at that moment was faithfully promised. 

When the child was at the font, and while the 
guests were seated, the apparition sat with them at 
the table ; but fear came upon the Graeme at this 
strange glamourie : he forgot the solemn injunc- 
tion, and it is believed that Mr. Kirke, to this day, 
" drees his weird in fairy land." 



PROPHECY OF SPECTRES. 

11 I'll take the ghost's word for a thousand pound." — Hamlet. 

Ev. These are very meager spectres, Astrophel, 
or accomplices, as the lawyer would say, after the 
fact. 

Ast. I have reserved prophecies for this evening. 
In the earliest profane records of our globe, we 
read of the frequent visitations of prophetic phan- 
toms. Listen, Evelyn, to a story of your own Pliny 
— the legend of Curtius Rufus. When he was in 
low circumstances, and unknown in the world, he 
attended the governor of Africa into that province. 
One evening, as he was walking in the public por- 
tico, he was extremely surprised with the appari- 
tion of a woman, whose figure and beauty were 
more than human. She told him she was the tu- 
telar power who presided over Africa, and was 
come to inform him of the future events of his life : 
that he should go back to Rome, where he should 
be raised to the highest honours, should return to 
that province invested with the proconsular dignity, 
and there should die. Upon his arrival at Carthage, 
as he was coming out of the ship, the same figure 
accosted him upon the shore. It is certain, at least, 
that being seized with a fit of illness, though there 
were no symptoms in his case that led his attend- 



24 PROPHECY OF SPECTRES. 

ants to despair, he instantly gave up all hope of re- 
covery, and this prediction was in all its points ac- 
complished. 

The shade of Romulus appeared to Julius Procu- 
lus, a patrician, foretelling the splendour of Rome. 
The fate of the battle of Philippi was shown to 
Brutus in his tent by the evil spirit of Caesar ; and 
Cassius also saw the phantom of Julius on his 
horse, prepared to strike him, shortly before his 
suicide. In the Talmud we read of the announce- 
ment of the Rabbi Samuel's death to two of his 
friends six hundred miles off. Then, the host of le- 
gends in that " treasure-booke" of mystery, " Wan- 
ley's Wonders ;" the visions of Dion ; of Alexan- 
der; of Crescentius ; of the Pope's legate at the 
Council of Trent; of Cassius Severus of Parma; 
and myriads of analogies to these ; nay, may we 
not believe that the Grecian bards wrote fragments 
of real history when Patroclus foretels the death 
of Hector, Hector that of Achilles, and Mezentius 
of Orodes, or when GEdipus predicts the lofty fate 
of his family to Theseus % 

But leave we the olden classics for the proofs 
ol later ages. In the pine forests of Germany, and 
in wild Caledonia, the legends of spirits and shad- 
ows abound in the gossip of the old crones, both 
in the hut of the jager and the sheiling of the 
Highland peasant. 

The Taisch (like the Bodacli Glas of Fergus 
Maclvor) murmurs the prophecy of death, in the 
voice of the Taishtar, to one about to die ; and 
the Wraith, Swarthy Waft, or Death-Fetch , ap- 
pears in the Eidolon, or likeness of the person so 
early doomed, to some loved friend of the party, 
or sounds of wailing and prophetic voices scream 
and murmur in the mountain blast. The wild 
romances of Ossian, and the shadowy mysteries so 



PROPHECY OF SPECTRES. 25 

brightly illustrated in the poesy of the " Lay," the 
" Lady of the Lake," and " Marmion," prove how 
deeply the common mind of Scotland leans to her 
mysteries ; how devoutly her seers foretel a doom. 
The evidence of Martin, the historian of the West- 
ern Isles, is clear and decisive testimony of the 
possession of a faculty of foresight; and in the re 
fleeting minds of many sages, who seek not to ex- 
plain it by the term coincidence, or to impute the 
vision to mere national superstition. Indeed, in 
their records we have rules noted down by which 
the seer may overcome the imperfections of his 
vision. If this be filmy or indistinct, the cloak or 
plaid must be turned, and the sight is clear ; but 
then the fated seer is often presented with his own 
wraith. 

In -Aubrey's "Miscellanies" we read how Sir 
Richard Napier, immediately before his death, was 
journeying from Bedfordshire to Berks, and saw 
his own apparition lying stark and stiff on the bed; 
how Lady Diana Rich, the Earl of Holland's 
daughter, was met by her death-fetch in the garden 
at Kensington a month ere she died of smallpox; 
and listen to this legend of Aventine : 

" The Emperor Henry went down through the 
Strudel : in another vessel was Bruno, bishop of 
Wurtzberg, the emperor's kinsman. There sat 
upon a rock, that projected out of the water, a 
man blacker than a Moor, of a horrible aspect, ter- 
rible to all who beheld it, who cried out, and said 
to Bishop Bruno, ' Hear ! hear ! bishop : I am 
thine evil spirit ; thou art mine own ; go where 
thou wilt, thou shalt be mine : yet now will I do 
nought to thee, but soon shalt thou see me again.' 
The bishop crossed and blessed himself, but the 
holy sign was powerless. At Posenbeis, where 
dwelt die Lady Richlita of Ebersberg, the floor 




26 PROPHECY OF SPECTRES. 

of the banqueting-room fell in the evening : it was 
the death-fall of the bishop." 

As the Protector Seymour was walking with his 
duchess at their country seat, they perceived a 
spectral bloody hand thrust forth from a wall, and 
he was soon after beheaded. 

It is recorded that, like Julius Caesar, James of 
Scotland had three warnings. The saintly man in 
Lithgow palace, and another phantom, in Jedburgh, 
warned King James of his fate : the latter wrote 
a Latin couplet on the mantel-piece in the hall: 
had he read it wisely, he had not died at Flodden. 

The demon, or the guardian angel of Socrates, 
was also a prophetic Mentor — not only to the sage 
himself, but even to his companions in his pres- 
ence ; and the slighting of its counsel often brought 
regret to those who were the subjects of its warning. 

In the minds of Xenophon and Plato its influ- 
ence was devoutly believed, and from the hive of 
the Attic bee I steal this honeyed morsel : " One 
Timarchus, a noble Athenian, being at dinner in 
company with Socrates, he rose up to go away, 
which Socrates observing, bade him sit down again, 
for, said he, the demon has just now given me the 
accustomed sign. Some little time after, Timarchus 
offered again to be gone, and Socrates once more 
Stopped him, saying he had the same sign repeat- 
ed to him. At length, when Socrates was earnest 
in discourse, and did not mind him, Timarchus 
stole away, and in a few minutes after committed 
a murder, for which, being carried to execution, 
his last words were, ' That he had come to that un- 
timely end for not obeying the demon df Socrates.' " 

When Ben Jonson was sojourning at Hawthorn- 
den, he told Mr. Drummond of his own prophetic 
vision, that, " about the time of the plague in Lon- 
don, being in the country at Sir Robert Cotton's 



PROPHECY OP SPECTRES. 27 

house, with old Camden, he saw, in a vision, his 
eldest son, then a young child, and at London, ap- 
pear unto him, with the mark of a bloody cross on 
his forehead, as if it had been cut with a sword ; 
at which, amazed, he prayed unto God ; and in the 
morning he came to Mr. Camden's chamber to 
tell him, who persuaded him it was but an appre- 
hension, at which he should not be dejected. In 
the mean time, there came letters from his wife 
of the death of that boy in the plague. He appear- 
ed to him of a manly shape, and of that growth he 
thinks he shall be at the resurrection." 

From Walton's Lives I select the following 
fragment : it is a vision of Dr. Donne, the meta- 
physician, whose wife died after the birth of a dead 
child : " Sir Robert (Drury) returned about an 
hour afterward. He found his friend in a state of 
ecstasy, and so altered in his countenance that he 
could not look upon him without amazement. The 
doctor was not able for some time to answer the 
question what had befallen him ; but, after a long 
and perplexed pause, at last said, ' I have seen a 
dreadful vision since I last saw you. I have seen 
my dear wife pass twice by me through this room, 
with her hair hanging about her shoulders, and a 
dead child in her arms : this I have seen since I 
saw you.' To which Sir Robert answered, ' Sure, 
sir, you have slept since I went out, and this is the 
result of some melancholy dream, which I desire 
you to forget, for you are now awake.' Donne 
replied, ' I cannot be more sure that I now live, 
than that I have not slept since I saw you ; and am 
as sure that, at her second appearing, she stopped,- 
looked me in the face, and vanished.' " 

There was a promise by Lord Tyrone to Lady 
Beresford of a visitation from the tomb. Even 
when the phantom appeared to her in the night, 



28 PROPHECY OF SPECTRES. 

the lady expressed her diffidence in its reality ; but 
it placed a mark upon her wrist, and adjusted her 
bed-curtains in some supernatural fashion, and 
even wrote something in her pocket-book ; so that 
with earnestness she related to her husband in the 
morning this impressive vision ; and it was not long 
ere missives came which, by announcing the death 
of Lord Tyrone, proved the spectre prophetic. 

The tragedian John Palmer died on the stage at 
Liverpool. At the same hour and minute, a shop- 
man in London, sleeping under a counter, saw dis- 
tinctly his shade glide through the shop, open the 
door, and pop into the street. This, an hour or 
two after, he mentioned very coolly, as if Mr. Pal- 
mer himself had been there. 

Cardan saw, on the ring-finger on his right hand, 
the mark of a bloody sword, and heard, at the same 
time, a voice which bade him go directly to Milan. 
The redness progressively increased until mid- 
night; the mark then faded gradually and disap- 
peared. At that midnight hour his son was be- 
headed at Milan. 

It was told by Knowles, the governor of Lord 
Roscommon when a boy, that young Wentworth 
Dillon was one day seized with a mood of the wild- 
est eccentricity, contrary to his usual disposition. 
On a sudden he exclaimed, " My father is dead !" 
And soon after missives came from Ireland to an- 
nounce the fact. 

The father of Dr. Blomberg, clerk of the closet 
to George IV., was captain in an army serving in 
America. We are told by Dr. Rudge that six of- 
ficers, three hundred miles from his position, were 
visited after dinner by this modern Banquo, who 
sat down in a vacant chair. One said to him, 
" Blomberg, are you mad ]" He rose in silence, 
and slowly glided out at the door. He was slain 
on that day and hour. 



PROPHECY OF SPECTRES. 29 

In the " Diary of a Physician" (an embellished 
record of facts) we read the story of the spectre- 
smitten Mr. M , whose leisure hours were pass- 
ed in the perusal of legends of diablerie and witch- 
craft. One evening, when his brain was excited 
by Champagne, he returned to his rooms, and saw 
a dear friend in his chair ; and this friend had died 
suddenly, and was at that moment laid out in his 
chamber ; a combination of horrors so unexpected 
and intense, that monomania was the result. 

May I also recount to you this vision from Moore's 
Life of Byron ] " Lord Byron used sometimes to 
mention a strange story which the commander of 
the packet, Captain Kidd, related to him on the 
passage. This officer stated that, being asleep one 
night in his berth, he was awakened by the press- 
ure of something heavy on his limbs, and, there be- 
ing a faint light in the room, could see, as he thought, 
distinctly the figure of his brother, who was at that 
time in the same service in the East Indies, dress- 
ed in his uniform, and stretched across the bed. 
Concluding it to be an illusion of the senses, he 
shut his eyes and made an effort to sleep. But still 
the same pressure continued, and still, as often as 
he ventured to take another look, he saw the figure 
lying across him in the same position. To add to 
the wonder, on pulling his hand forth to touch this 
form, he found the uniform in which it appeared 
to be dressed dripping wet. On the entrance of 
one of his brother officers, to whom he called out 
in alarm, the apparition vanished ; but in a few 
months after he received the startling intelligence 
that on that night his brother had been drowned in 
the Indian Seas. Of the supernatural character of 
this appearance Captain Kidd himself did not ap- 
pear to have the slightest doubt." 

From Dr. Pritchard I quote this fragment: "A 
C 2 



30 PROPHECY OP SPECTRES. 

maidservant, who lived in the house of an elderly- 
lady, some years since deceased, had risen early on 
a winter's morning, and was employed in washing 
by candlelight the entry of the house, when she 
was greatly surprised at seeing her mistress, who 
was then in a precarious state of health, coming 
down stairs in her night dress. The passage be- 
ing narrow, she rose up to let her mistress pass, 
which the latter did with a hasty step, and walked 
into the street, appearing, to the terrified imagina- 
tion of the girl, to pass through the door without 
opening it. The servant related the circumstance 
to the son and daughter of the lady as soon as they 
came down stairs, who desired her to conceal it 
from their mother, and anxiously waited for her 
appearance. The old lady entered the room while 
they were talking of the incident, but appeared 
languid and unwell, and complained of having been 
disturbed by an alarming dream. She had dream- 
ed that a dog had pursued her from her chamber 
down the staircase and along the entry, and that 
she teas obliged to take refuge in the streets." 

In the manuscripts of Lady Fanshawe, how evi- 
dent is the fact of spectral prophecy ! Sir Richard 
Fanshawe and his lady were sleeping in a baro- 
nial castle in Ireland, surrounded by a moat. At 
midnight she was awoke by a ghostly and fearful 
screaming, and gleaming before the window in 
the pale moonlight a female spectre hovered, her 
light auburn hair dishevelled over her shoulders. 
"While the lady looked in mute astonishment, the 
spectre vanished, uttering two distinct shrieks. 
Her terrific story was told in the morning to her 
host, who evinced no wonder at the mystery: " In- 
deed," quoth he, " I expected this. This was the 
prophetic phantom of our house, the spectre of a 
lady wedded to an ancestor, and drowned hy him 



PROPHECY OF SPECTRES. 31 

in the moat from false notions of dignity, because 
she was not of noble blood. Since this expiation, 
the phantom appears before every death of my near 
relations, and one of these died last night in my 
castle." Here may be the prototype of the " White 
Lady of Avenel." 

Among the most exalted families we have other 
confident records of the recurrence of prophetic 
phantoms, antecedent to great events. A spectre 
of this kind formed a part of the household estab- 
lishment of the Macleans. During the Peninsular 
war, at the moment that the head of the clan died 
at Lisbon, this wraith was seen to ride, screaming, 
along the shore in Scotland. 

Arise Evans, in a 12mo tract, " sold at his house 
in Long Alley in Blackfriars in 1653," entitled 
" An Echo from Heaven," foretold the restoration 
of Charles II. ; and his true prophecy was based on 
the vision of a young face with a crown on, appear- 
ing after the shades of Fairfax and of Cromwell. 

There is an incident in Roman history so im- 
pressive in its catastrophe, so exact in its periods, 
that few, I think, will deny the inspiration. At the 
moment that Stephanus stabbed Domitian in his 
palace at Rome, the philosopher Apollonius Ty- 
aneus, in his school at Ephesus, exclaimed, " Cour- 
age, Stephanus ! strike the tyrant home !" and a 
minute after, tvhen Parthenius completed this hom- 
icide, he added, " He suffers for his crimes — he 
dies." 

I have slightly sketched these illustrations, and I 
presume to term them prophecies. There are others 
so complex, yet so complete in every part, as to 
convert, I might hope, even the unbelief of Evelyn. 
To the relations of Sir Walter and Dr. Abercrom- 
bie, I will add one from Moreton, in his " Essay 
on Apparitions :" " The Reverend D. Scott, of 



32 PROPHECY OF SPECTRES. 

Broad-street, was sitting alone in his study. On 
a sudden the phantom of an old gentleman, dressed 
in a black velvet gown, and full bottom wig, enter- 
ed, and sat himself down in a chair opposite to the 
doctor. The visiter informed him of a dilemma in 
which his grandson, who lived in the west country, 
was placed, by the suit of his nephew for the re- 
covery of an estate. This suit would be successful 
unless a deed of conveyance was found, which had 
been hidden in an old chest in a loft of the house. 
On his arrival at this house, he learned that his 
grandson had dreamed of this visit, and that his 
grandfather was coming to aid him in the search. 
The deed was found in a false bottom of the old 
chest, as the vision had promised." 

In a letter of Philip, the second Earl of Chester- 
field, is told the following strange story, which, 
although not a prophecy, cannot be within the pale 
of our philosophy. " On a morning in 1652, the 
earl saw a thing in white, like a standing sheet, 
within a yard of his bedside. He attempted to 
catch it, but it slid to the foot of the bed, and he 
saw it no more. His thoughts turned to his lady, 
who was then at Networth with her father, the 
Earl of Northumberland. On his arrival at Net- 
worth, a footman met him on the stairs with a 
packet directed to him from his wife, whom he 
found with Lady Essex her sister, and Mrs. Ram- 
sey. He was asked why he returned so suddenly. 
He told his motive ; and, on perusing the letters in 
the packet, he found that his lady had written to 
him requesting his return, for she had seen a thing 
in white, with a black face, by her bedside. These 
apparitions were seen by the earl and countess at 
the same moment, when they were forty miles 
asunder." 

Tho miraculous spirit which the influence of 



PROPHECY OF SPECTRES. S3 

Joan of Arc infused into the desponding hearts of 
the French army is written on the page of history. 
Before her proposition for the inauguration of 
Charles VII. at Rheims, she heard a celestial voice 
in her prayer, " Fille, va, va ! je seray a ton ayde 
— va !" and her revelation of secrets to the king 
which he thought were locked within his own bo- 
som, raised in the court implicit belief in her in- 
spiration. 

And now, Evelyn, I ask you, 

" Can such things be, 
And overcome us like a summer cloud, 
Without our special wonder ?" 

Ere you smile at my fantasie, and overwhelm me 
with doubts and solutions, I pr'ythee let me coun- 
sel your philosophy. Dig to a certain depth in the 
field of science, and you may find the roots and 
the gold-dust of knowledge ; penetrate deeper, 
and you will strike against the granite rock, on 
which rest the cold and profitless reasonings of the 
skeptic. 

Cast. You look on me, Astrophel, as on a bend- 
ing proselyte. Yet, sooth to tell, it may be diffi- 
cult to convert me, although I am half won to 
romance already by the witch-thoughts of him who 
gilded the science of the heart and mind with all 
the iridescent charm of poesy — an unprofessing 
philosopher, yet with marvellous insight of human 
hearts — my own loved Shakspeare. An you listen 
to my Lord Lyttleton, he will tell you, in his " Di 
alogues of the Dead," that " in the annihilation of 
our globe, were Shakspeare's works preserved, the 
whole science of man's nature might still be read 
therein." And so beautifully are his sketches of 
the heart and the fancy blended withal, that we 
hang with equal delight on the mystic philosophy 
of Hamlet, the witchcraft of Mab, and Ariel, and 
3 



34 PROPHECY OF SPECTRES. 

Oberon, with their golden wreaths of gay blossoms, 
as on the dying visions of Katherine, as pure and 
holy as the vesper-breathings of a novice. Yet the 
shade of superstition never darkened the brow of 
Shakspeare. Therefore, plume not yourself on your 
hope of conquest, Astrophel ; Evelyn may win me 
yet. Philosophy may frown on the visions of an 
enthusiast, while she doth grace her pages with a 
poet's dream. But you will not wear the willow, 
Astrophel ; there is a beam of pity for you in the 
eyes of yon pensive Ida. 

Ida. You are a witch, Castaly. Yet I have as 
little faith in the quaint stories of Astrophel. A 
mystery must be purified and chastened by sacred 
solemnity ere it may be blended with the contem- 
plation of holy study. And yet there is an arch 
voluptuary, Boccacio, the coryphaeus of a loose 
band of novelists, who has stained a volume by his 
profane union of holiness and passion. The scenes 
of his Decameron are played amid the raging of 
the plague, by flaunting youths and maidens, but 
that moment arisen from the solemnity of a Ca- 
thedral prayer ! 

Astr. You will call up the shade of Valdarfar, 
Ida, that idol of the Roxburghe Club, and printer 
of the Decameron — 

Ida. If he appear, he shall vanish at a word, 
Astrophel. Yet we may not lightly yield the in- 
fluence of special visitations, even in our own days, 
when solemn belief is chastened by holy motives, 
and becomes the spring of living waters. Even 
the taint of superstition may be almost sanctified 
on such a plea ; and Baxter may be forgiven half 
his credulity when he wrote his "Saints' Rest" 
and the " Essay on Apparitions," to convert the 
skeptics of London, who, in the dearth of signs 
and wonders, expressed their willingness to believe 



PROPHECY OF SPECTRES. 35 

the soul's immortality if they had proofs of ghostly 
visitations. 

I will myself even quote a mystery (I believe 
recorded in Sandys's Ovid) for the sake of the 
moral which it bears. It is the legend of " The 
Room of the Ladye's Figure." Whether it be a 
tale of Bavaria, or a mere paraphrase from the 
Saxon Sabinus, I know not. 

This is the story of Otto, a Bavarian gentleman 
of passionate nature, mourning for his wife. On 
one of his visits to her tomb, a mournful voice, 
which murmured, " A blessed evening, sir!" came 
o'er his ear ; and while his eyes fell on the form 
of a young chorister, he placed a letter in his hands 
and vanished. His wonder was extreme while he 
read this mysterious despatch, which was addressed 
" To my dear husband, who sorrows for his wife," 
and signed, " This, with a warm hand, from the 
living Bertha," and appointing an interview in the 
public walk. Thither, on a beautiful evening, sped 
the Bavarian, and there, among the crowd, sat a 
lady covered by a veil. With a trembling voice 
he whispered " Bertha," when she arose, and, with 
her warm and living arm on his, returned to his 
once desolate home. There were odd thoughts, 
surmises, and wonderings passing among the friends 
of Otto, and suspicions of a mock funeral and a 
solemn cheat ; but all subsided as time stole over, 
and their wedded life was without a cloud, until a 
paroxysm of his rage, one fatal day, was vented on 
the lady, who cried, " This to me ! what if the 
world knew all !" With this broken sentence she 
vanished from the room. In her chamber, whither 
the search led, erect, as it were gazing on the fire, 
her form stood ; but when they looked on it in 
front, there was a headless hood, and the clothes 
were standing as if enveloping a form, but no body 



4 

36 PROPHECY OF SPECTRES. 

was there ! Need I say that a thrill of horror 
crept through all at the mystery, and a fear at the 
approach of Otto, who, though deeply penitent, 
was deserted by all but a graceless reprobate, his 
companion, and his almoner to many a stranger, 
who knew not the unhallowed source of bounty % 

That belief cannot be an error which associates 
divine thoughts with the events of human life. I 
remember, as I was roaming over the wild region 
of Snowdonia, we sat above the valley and the 
lakes of Nant Grwinant, on which the red ridge 
of Clwd Coch threw a broad and purple shadow, 
while over Moel Elion and Myneth Mawr the sun 
was bathed in a flood of crimson light. The Welch 
guide was looking down in deep thought on Llyn 
Grwinant, and, with a tear in his eye, he told us a 
pathetic story of two young pedestrians who were 
benighted among the mountains on their ascent 
from Beddgelert. They had parted company in 
the gloom of the evening, and each was alone in a 
desert. On a sudden the voice of one of them 
was distinctly heard by the other, in the direction 
of the gorge which bounds the pass of Llanberis, 
as if encouraging him to proceed. The wanderer 
followed its sound, and at length escaped from this 
labyrinth of rocks, and arrived safely at Capel 
Currig. In the morning, his friend's body was 
found lying far behind the spot where the phantom 
voice was first heard, and away from the course of 
their route. Was this a special spirit, a solemn in- 
stance of friendship after death, as if the phantom 
had been endowed with supernatural power, and 
become the guardian angel of his friend, or the 
special whisper of the Deity in the ear of the liv- 
ing 1 A belief in this spiritual visitation is often 
the consolation of pure Christianity, |for "the shad- 
ow of God is light I" With some the hope of 



PROPHECY OF SPECTRES. 37 

heaven rests on it ; and holy men have thought that 
the presence of a spirit may even sanctify the being 
which it approaches with an emanation of its own 
holiness. Nay, do we not witness a blessing like 
this in the common walks of life, as in that beauti- 
ful story (told by the Bishop of Gloucester) of the 
vision of her dead mother by the daughter of Sir 
James Lee in 1662 1 

Is not the effect of these visitations, to a chasten- 
ed mind, ever fraught with good ] It may be 
merely a wisdom or a virtue in decision, as when 
my Lord Herbert, of Cherbury, prayed to God to 
declare whether he should publish his book " De 
Veritate," he heard a gentle voice from heaven, 
which answered his prayer with a solemn approval 
of his design. It may be the checking of our pride 
of life, or our self-glory for success ; a divine les- 
son that may counsel us against worldly wisdom 
in this golden precept, "Seek to be admired by 
angels rather than by men." So that complete 
conversion may follow the vision of a spirit. Dodd- 
ridge has given us the stories of Colonel Gardiner 
and the Rev. Vincent Perronet ; and in the " Baronii 
Annales" we read of Ticinus, a departed friend 
of Michael Mercator, then a profane student in 
philosophy, who, according to a preconcerted prom- 
ise, appeared to him at the moment that he died, 
afar off in Florence. The vision so alarmed his 
conscience that he at once became a devout stu- 
dent in divinity. 

In the city of Nantes, as we see it written by 
William of Malmsbury, in the twelfth century, 
dwelt two young ecclesiastics. Between them was 
a solemn compact, that within thirty days after the 
death of either, his shade should appear, sleeping 
or waking, to the surviver, to declare if the true 
psychology was the doctrine of Plato or of the 
D 



38 PROPHECY OF SPECTRES. 

Epicureans ; if the soul survived the body, or van- 
ished into air. The shade appeared like one dy- 
ing, while the spirit passeth away; and discoursing, 
like the ghost of Hamlet's father, of the pains of 
infernal punishments, stretched forth his ulcerous 
arm, and asked if " it seemed as light ;" then, 
dropping the caustic humour from his arm on the 
temples of the living witness, which were corroded 
by the drop, he warned him of the same penalties 
if he entered not into holy orders in the city of 
Rennes. This solemn warning worked his con- 
version, and he became a pious and exemplary 
devotee, under the holy wings of Saint Melanius. 

In these instances, is not the special influence 
of the Deity evident % and why will our profane 
wisdom still draw us from our leaning to this holy 
creed, causing us to " forsake the fountains of liv- 
ing water, and hew out unto ourselves broken 
cisterns that can hold no water V 

How awfully beautiful is the Mosaic picture of 
the first mortal communion with the Creator, when 
the vision of God was heard by Adam and Eve, 
walking in the garden in the cool of the day ; or 
when the Deity appeared to Abraham and to Mo- 
ses, and his word came to Manoah and to Noah, 
with the blessings of a promise ; or when his angels 
of light descended to console, and to relieve from 
chains and from fire ; or when the angel of the 
Lord first appears in the vision to Cornelius ; and 
the trance, or, rather, the counterpart of the vision, 
comes over St. Peter at Joppa, and the arrival of 
the men sent by the centurion confirms the mira- 
cle ; and then, the last sublime revealings of the 
Apocalypse ! You will not call it presumption, 
Evelyn, that I adduce these holy records to con- 
firm our modern faith, and ask you why philos- 
ophy will yet chain our thoughts to earth, and affirm 
our visions to be a meanless fantasy 1 



ILLUSION OF SPECTRES. 39 

ILLUSION OF SPECTRES. 

" More strange than true. I never may believe 
These antique fables."— Midsummer Night's Dream. 

Ev. Your holy thoughts, fair Ida, are but an 
echo of my own. The grand causes and awful 
judgments of the inspired aeras of the world prove 
the truth by the necessity of the miracles, not only 
in answer to the Pharisees and Sadducees, who 
required a sign, but even before the eyes of the 
early disciples, whose apathetic hearts soon forgot 
the miracles, and their divine Master himself; for, 
as he was walking on the sea, " at the fourth watch, 
they thought he was a spirit." 

I would fain, however, adopt the precept of Lord 
Bacon, to waive theology in my discussions and 
my illustrations, because I am unwilling to blend 
the sacred truths of spiritual futurity with argu- 
ments on the imperfection of material existence. 
/ In the abstract spiritual evidence of all modern 
superstition I have little faith. These records are 
scarcely more to be confided in than fairy tales, or 
fictions like those of many antique sages : as the 
rabbins, that " the cherubim are the wisest, the 
seraphim the most amiable, of angels ;" or of the 
visionary Jew of Burgundy, whom, in 1641, John 
Evelyn spoke with in Holland : " He told me that, 
when the Messias came, all the ships, barkes, and 
vessels of Holland should, by the powere of cer- 
taine strange whirle winds, be loosed from their 
ankers, to convey their brethren and tribes to the 
holy citty ;" or even that of Melancthon, that his 
sable majesty once appeared to his own aunt in 
the shape of her husband, and grasping her hand, 
so scorched and shrivelled it that it remained black 
ever after. These are fair samples of credulity. 

You will call me presumptuous, but, believe me, 



40 ILLUSION OF SPECTRES. 

Astrophel, it is superstition which is presumptuous 
and positive, and not philosophy ; for credulity be- 
lieves on profane tradition, or the mere assertion 
of a mortal. But the glory of philosophy is humili- 
ty ; for they who, like Newton, and Playfair, and 
Wollaston, and Davy, look deeply into the wonder 
and beauty of creation, will be ever humbled by 
the contemplation of their own being, an atom of 
the universe. A philosopher cannot be proud; 
for, like Socrates, he confesses his ignorance, be- 
cause he is ever searching for truth. He cannot 
be a skeptic ; for when he has dived into the deeps 
of science, his thoughts will ascend the more to- 
wards the Deity : he has grasped all that science can 
afford him, and there is nothing left for his mighty 
mind but divine things and holy hopes. Philosophy 
is not confident either, because she ever waits for 
more experience and more weight of testimony. 

How often, Astrophel, must we be deceived, 
like children, by distance, until experience teaches 
us truth. By this we know that the turrets of dis- 
tant towers are high, yet they dwindle in our sight 
to the mere vanishing point, as the child believes 
them. Such is the power of demonstration. 

The ancient polytheists could not be other than 
idolaters and believers in prophecy. The rabbins 
were schooled, in addition to the books of Moses, \^ 
in those of Zoroaster, in the Talmud, which was 
the magic volume of the Jews, and the Takurni, 
or Persian Almanac, the annual expositor of natu- 
ral and judicial astrology in the clime of the sun. 

The sages who lived immediately after the light 
of Christianity had been shed over the Holy Land 
had not forgotten- the miracles wrought in the holy 
city, but they profaned Omnipotence by making 
them purposeless. 

Superstition then formed a part of the national 



ILLUSION OF SPECTRES. 41 

creed : even a mere word, as " Epidamnum," they 
dreaded to pronounce, as it was of such awful im- 
port ; and credulity and blind faith in the prophetic 
truth of omens and oracles prevailed. We read in 
Montfaucon that twelve hundred believed in this 
miracle of Virgil : 

" Captus a Romanis invisibiliter exiit, ivitque Neapolim :" 
that he rendered himself invisible to the Romans 
and escaped to Naples. The influence of this blind 
infatuation was the spring of many actions, which, 
like the daring of the Indian fatalist in battle, were 
vaunted as deeds of heroic self-martyrdom. 

Marcus Curtius, the trembling of the earth hav- 
ing opened a chasm in the Roman forum, leaped 
into it on horseback, when the soothsayers declared 
it would not close until the most valuable thing in 
the city was flung into it. And the two Decii 
offered themselves as the willing sacrifice to en- 
sure a victory for their country, one in the war 
with the Latins, the other in that of the Etrurians 
and Umbrians. 

Aristotle and Galen were exceptions. It is true 
that Socrates believed himself under the influence 
of a demon, a sort of delegate from the Deity — in- 
deed, that God willed his death ; for when his 
friend pressed him on his trial to compose his de- 
fence, he answered thus : " The truth is, I was 
twice going about to make my apology, but was 
twice withheld by my demon." But remember, 
Astrophel, the Greek word which the philosopher 
employed, to daifiovLOV, and you will rather confess 
that it implies the Deity, as if some divine inspira- 
tion taught him ; or perchance, as some of his com- 
mentators believe, this invisible monitor was mere- 
ly the impersonation of the faculty of judgment, 
and of that deep knowledge and forethought with 
which his mind was fraught. 
D2 



42 ILLUSION OF SPECTRES. 

Cicero, too, is said to have written arguments to 
prove the divine origin of the oracle of Delphi ; 
but it is well believed by classics that Addison has, 
in his letter in the Spectator, mistaken Cicero for 
Cato. 

Recollect, Astrophel, this is an old point with 
us, when we were reading the subject of Auguries 
in his book, " De Divinatione," in which he won- 
ders " that one soothsayer can look another in the 
face without laughing ;" and you remember Lu- 
cian ridicules ghost-seeing as the whim of imagina- 
tion. You have cited Pliny. True, Pliny is an in- 
teresting story-teller, although he warps somewhat 
the phantoms of his dreams. But what is the first 
sentence of his letter to Sura 1 "I am very desi- 
rous to know your opinion concerning spectres ; 
whether you believe them to have a real existence, 
and are a sort of divinities, or are only the vision- 
ary impressions of a terrified imagination." 

And what did Johnson confess % That " this is 
a question which, after five thousand years, is still 
undecided ; a question, whether in theology or 
philosophy, one of the most important that can 
come before the human understanding." So you 
see the vaunted creed of Johnson was at least, like 
the coffin of Mohammed, poised between the af- 
firmative and negative of the proposition. The 
sage was a strict spiritualist, and, as Boswell says, 
" wished for more evidence of spirit in opposition 
to materialism." On some points he was also 
mighty superstitious, and constantly affirmed his 
conviction that he should himself run mad. This 
augury failed, and therefore the prophetic nature 
of second sight needs more convincing proof than 
the creed of Johnson. In his own words, " Fore- 
sight is not prescience." 

As to the second sight of Caledon, he confesses 



ILLUSION OF SPECTRES. 43 

that, although in his journey he searched diligently, 
he saw but one seer, and he was grossly ignorant, 
as indeed they usually are. " He came away only 
willing to believe," the learned and literary even 
in the far Hebrides, especially the clergy, being 
altogether skeptics. 

In the consideration of this question in the study 
of psychology, it has been an error to conclude 
that, because in some certain works arguments are 
adduced by imaginary characters in support of the 
appearance of departed spirits, such was the posi- 
tive belief of their authors. If, then, for instance, 
the arguments of Imlac, in Rasselas, which aim at 
the proof of spectral reality, or, rather, the appear- 
ance of departed beings, be adduced as an evi- 
dence of Johnson's own belief, I might observe 
that it were equally rational to identify the minds 
or dispositions of Massinger and Sir Giles Over- 
reach, of Shakspeare and Iago. 

Like the Catholic priesthood, who rule the igno- 
rant by the force of superstition, leaders have been 
induced to profess the possession of this faculty to 
overawe their proselytes by their own deeper 
knowledge, as Numa vaunted his intimacy with 
the nymph Egeria at her fountain. 

For this purpose even the Corsican general, 
Pascal Paoli, assumed the profession of a seer, 
and the mystery of his prescience was on the lips 
of every Corsican. When Boswell asked if the 
fulfilments of his prophecies were frequent, a Cor- 
sican grasped a bundle of his hair, and whispered, 
" Tante, tante, signore !" 

But I will not play the dullard, Astrophel, while 
you, with your legendary romance, charm the lis- 
tening ears of ladyes fayre. I will have my turn 
of story-telling (avoiding the myriads of queer 
tales told by superstitious and unlettered visiona- 



44 ILLUSION OF SPECTRES. 

ries on the look-out for marvels, by servant-maids, 
and rustics, and silly people, the chief actors in 
ghost stories), and therefore, in the face of these 
negative conclusions, even of Johnson, hear one 
unparalleled story, culled from the rich treasury 
of Master Aubrey's " Miscellanies." It was of an 
Earl of Caithness, who, desirous of ascertaining 
the distance of a vessel which was laden with wine 
for his cellars, proposed a question to a seer. The 
answer was, " At the distance of four hours' sail." 
It may be some doubt was expressed of the truth 
of this oracle ; for, to prove his gift of clairvoyance, 
he laid before the earl the cap of a seaman in the 
ship, which he had that moment taken off his head. 
The vessel duly arrived, and lo ! a sailor claimed 
the cap in the seer's hand, affirming that, four hours 
before, it had been blown from his head by the 
gale. Is not this the very acme of effrontery % 

Carolan, the inspired bard of Erin, confessed he 
could not compose a planxty for a certain lady of 
Sligo, even when he made an effort to celebrate 
her wondrous beauty ; and one day, in despair, he 
threw away his harp, and fell into a lament that 
some evil genius was hovering over him : from his 
harp strings (in contrast with those of Anacreon) 
he could sweep only a mournful music, and he 
thence prophesied, and that truly, the death of the 
lady within the year. 

Dubuisson, a dentist of Edinburgh, on the day 
preceding the death of President Blair, met him in 
the street, and was addressed by the president with 
a peculiar expression. On the day before the death 
of Lord Melville, the dentist was met by him ex- 
actly in the same spot, and accosted by my lord in 
the very same words. On the death of Lord Mel- 
ville, Dubuisson exclaimed that he should be the 
third. He became immediately indisposed, and 
died within an hour. 



ILLUSION OF SPECTRES. 45 

In the " Miscellanies" of Aubrey we read, that 
John Evelyn related to the Royal Society the case 
of the curate of Deptford, Mr. Smith, who, in No- 
vember, 1679, was sick of an ague. To this rever- 
end clerk appeared the phantom of a master of 
arts, with a white wand in his hand, who promised 
that if he lay on his back three hours, from ten to 
one, his ague would leave him. And this prophecy 
was also, to the very letter, fulfilled. 

Napoleon, when he was marching upon Acre, 
had a djerme, or Nile boat, with some of his troops, 
destroyed ; the boat's name was L'ltalie ; and from 
this he said, " Italy is lost to France." And so it 
was. 

During the siege of Jerusalem, for seven days a 
man paraded round the walls, exclaiming, with a 
solemn voice, " Wo to Jerusalem !" and on the 
seventh day he added, " Wo to Jerusalem and 
myself/ 1 ' when, at the moment of this anathema, a 
missile from the enemy destroyed him. 

Do you wonder that the prophecy of Monsieur 
Cazotte of his own decapitation, recorded in his 
" CEuvres de M. de la Harpe," should have been 
fulfilled ] for in 1788, when this prophecy was ut- 
tered, the guillotine was daily reeking with patri- 
cian blood, and the Duchess of Grammont, Vicq 
d'Azyr, Condorcet, and Cazotte himself, among a 
host of others, were dragged to the scaffold. 

When dark events were overclouding Poland, 
to Sorvenski the warrior, a convert to magnetism, 
it was imparted in a vision that Warsaw should be 
deluged in blood, and that he should fall in battle. 
In two years these forebodings were fulfilled. 

It is known that Lord Falkland and Archbishop 
Williams both warned Charles I. of his fate ; but 
it required no ghost to tell him that. And I have 
known many deeply interested in the fate of absent 



46 ILLUSION OF SPECTRES. 

friends, and knowing their circumstances and lo- 
cality, so prophesy that they seemed to have all 
the faculty of clairvoyance. The young ladies of 
Britain, during the Peninsular war, were often 
dreaming of the apparitions of their lovers, perhaps 
at the hour of their expiring on the field of battle : 
coincidences that must make a deep impression on 
sensitive minds. Were I justified in divulging se- 
crets and confessions, I might relate some curious 
stories of these inauspicious dreams. 

At the moment of the duel between Mr. Pitt and 
Mr. Tierney, on Wimbledon Common, a lady of 
fashion in London exclaimed, " This is the impor- 
tant moment 1" 

Oliver Cromwell had reclined on his couch, and 
extreme fatigue forbade the coming on of sleep. 
On a sudden his curtains opened, and a gigantic 
female form imparted to him that he should be the 
greatest man in England. The puritanical faith 
and ambition of Cromwell might have raised, du- 
ring the distracted state of the kingdom, something 
even beyond this ; and who may decide, if the spec- 
tre had whispered, " Thou shalt be king hereafter," 
that the Protector would have refused the crown, 
as, on the feast of Lupercal, it had been refused by 
Caesar 1 

" General Oglethorpe," writes Boswell, " told 
us that Prendergast, an officer in the Duke of Marl- 
borough's army, had mentioned to many of his 
friends that he should die on a particular day. 
Upon that day a battle took place with the French ; 
and after it was over, and Prendergast was still 
alive, his brother officers, while they were yet in 
the field, jestingly asked him where was his proph- 
ecy now. Prendergast gravely answered, ' I shall 
die, notwithstanding what you see.' Soon after- 
ward there came a shot from a French battery, to 



ILLUSION OF SPECTRES. 47 

which the orders for a cessation of arms had not 
yet reached, and he was killed upon the spot I" 

But can these shallow stories be cited as 'proph- 
ecies ? The links in the chain of causation are ev- 
ident and the veriest skeptic cannot doubt their 
sequence, where there was so strong a probability. 
lit is merely by reflecting on the past, and judging 
\$he future by analogy. J Natural events of human 
actions have laws to govern them, and there is sel- 
dom foresight without the reflection on these laws. 
Lord Mansfield, when asked how the French rev- 
olution would end, replied, t£ It is an event with- 
| out a precedent, and therefore without a proph- 
ecy." 

Astr. Then you do not believe where you can- 
not develop the causes of events. Like all rational 
philosophers, you must have demonstrative proof. 
In which class of skeptics shall I enrol you, Eve- 
lyn ] As a proselyte of Aristotle, who will deny 
not only the existence of spirits, but affirm heaven 
and hell to be a fable, and that the world is self- 
existent ; or with the Epicureans, who believed 
the impious doctrine of blind chance — that the sun 
and stars were vapours, and the soul perishable ; or 
with the modern lights of reason — Sir Isaac New- 
ton, who confessed the Paradise Lost to be a fine 
poem, though it proved nothing; or the Abbe Lau- 
guerne, who, for the self-same reason, despised the 
brilliancy of Racine and Comeille ; or with the 
Sadducees themselves, who denied both prophecy 
\^jmd spirit ] 

Ev. Perhaps the Sadducees might have referred 
visions to the right cause, for phantoms differ little 
from Locke's " substance which thinks." But the 
mere metaphysician blinks the question (as Lord 
Bacon does that of experimental chemistry — " Vix 
unum experimentum adduci potest quod ad homi- 



48 ILLUSION OF SPECTRES. 

num statum levandum et juvandum spectat"), thus 
wofully depreciating the progress of chemical sci- 
ence, as if the discoveries of Woilaston, of Davy, 
of Dal ton, and of Faraday were fruitless. Re- 
member, modern philosophers are not like Xeno- 
phon, who (says Socrates) called all fools who dif- 
fered from his opinion. 

Even Baxter confesses the frequency of impos- 
ture in ghost stories, yet leans to the belief of all 
which he cannot account for. 

Now if philosophy had not doubted, science 
would be stationary. : We might still believe, with 
Heraclitus, that the sun was only a foot in breadth; 
or with Copernicus, that it revolved in its orbit, 
while the earth was at rest. Remember, Astro- 
phel, the way to the temple of Science is through 
the portals of doubt : it is a mark of weakness, "ju- 
rare in verba magistri." Even the prince philoso- 
pher of Denmark doubted the prophetic truth of 
his father's ghost on its mere appearance — (" The 
spirit I have seen maybe a devil") — until the scene 
of the play, and the stricken conscience of the king, 
and then only he believed that " it was an honest 
ghost." 

" It is true," as Lord Chesterfield wrote in 1653, 
" I know that God can make any such things to ap- 
pear, but because he can, therefore to conclude that 
' he doth is ill argued ; and although divers books are 
full of such stories, yet the soberest sort of men in 
all ages have doubted the truth of them." I might 
add to these the visions which have been so strange- 
ly warped to interpret a subsequent event. Those 
of ■William Rufus, and Innocent the Fourth, and 
Henry the Second of France, and a thousand oth- 
ers from ancient history, between the assumed 
prophecy and fulfilment of which there is about as 
much truth as when Lady Seymour dreamed of hav- 



ILLUSION OF SPECTRES. 49 

ing found a nest of nine finches, and soon after was 
married to Finch, earl of Winchelsea, and was 
blessed with a brood of nine children. 

With the coincidences of life we have all been 
struck; the ignorant, and timid, and superstitious 
among us with wonder ; but how comparatively- 
trivial are these tiny drops in the wide ocean of 
events, and what myriads of dreams and visions 
from which there are no results ! 

A simple incident occurred to me in the autumn 
of last year, which was so complete in its associa- 
tion as to be for a moment startling to myself. 

Influenced by a sort of veneration for the mem- 
ory of the good Gilbert White, of Selborne, I made 
a pilgrimage to that calm and rustic village, so ex- 
quisitely imbosomed among green meads, and 
beech-crowned chalk-hills, and forests imbrowned 
with heath and fern. 

On my entrance to the village, I was reflecting 
on the " idiot boy" who fed on honey which he 
pressed from the bees he caught, when lo ! at the 
first door a figure, which grinned at me, and mow- 
ed and muttered, but without the slightest verbal 
utterance. He was an idiot, but not White's idiot ; 
yet a visionary mind might readily, for a moment, 
believe it to be a phantom of the foolish boy, im- 
mortalized, as it were, in the " Natural History of 
Selborne." 

There was an imposing occurrence, also, during 
the funeral procession of Sir Walter Scott to Dry- 
burgh. A halt took place for many minutes (in 
consequence of an accident) precisely on the sum- 
mit of the hill at Bemerside, where a beautiful pros- 
pect opens, to contemplate which Sir Walter was 
ever wont to rein up his horse. 

" In 1811," writes Lord Byron, in a letter to Mr. 
Murray, " my old school and form fellow Peel, the 
4 E 



50 ILLUSION OF SPECTRES. 

Irish secretary, told me he saw me in St. James's- 
street : I was then in Turkey. A day or two af- 
terward he pointed out to his brother a person 
across the way, and said, ' There is the man I took 
for Byron ;' his brother answered, ' Why, it is By- 
ron, and no one else.' I was at this time seen to 
write my name in the Palace Book. I was then 
ill of a malaria fever. If I had died, here would 
have been a ghost story." 

While Lord Byron was at Colonna, his dervish 
Tahiri, as we read in his notes to the " Giaour," 
who professed the faculty of second hearing, proph- 
esied an attack of the Mainotes as they passed a 
certain perilous defile, but nothing came of it : the 
attack was not made ; and it is probable that some 
ringing in the ears of the dervish, and a knowledge 
that the defile was a haunt of brigands, were the 
springs of this notion. 

And there are events, too, which have all the in- 
tensity of romance, and seem involved in the deep- 
est mystery, and which, like Washington Irving's 
tale of the " Spectre Bridegroom," assume all the 
air of the supernatural until the enigma is solved, 
and then we cry, " How clear the solution !" 

Among the myriads of explained mysteries in 
the North, I will cite that of the farmer of Teviot- 
dale, who, in the gloom of evening, saw on the 
wall of a cemetery a pale form throwing about her 
arms, and mowing and chattering to the moon. 
With not a little terror he spurred his horse, but 
as he passed the phantom it dropped from its perch, 
and, like Tam o' Shanter's Nannie, fixing itself on 
the croup, clasped him tightly round the waist with 
arms of icy coldness. He arrived at home ; with 
a thrill of horror exclaimed, " Tak affthe ghaist!" 
and was carried shivering to bed. And what was 
the phantom ? A maniac widow, on her distracted 



ILLUSION OF SPECTRES. 51 

pilgrimage to the grave of her husband, for whom 
she had indeed mistaken the ill-fated farmer. 

The president of a literary club at Plymouth 
being very ill during its session, the chair, out of 
respect, was left vacant. While they were sitting, 
his apparition, in a white dress, glided in and took 
formal possession of the chair. His face was "wan 
like the cauliflower;" he bowed in silence to the 
company, carried his empty glass to his lips, and 
solemnly retired. They went to his house, and 
learned that he had just expired ! The strange 
event was kept a profound secret, until the nurse 
confessed on her deathbed that she had fallen 
asleep, that the patient had stolen out, and, having 
the pass-key of the garden, had returned to his 
bed by a short path before the deputation, and had 
died a few seconds after. 

In the records of his life by Taylor, we read of 
a trick of the great actor, who, like Brinsley Sher- 
idan, had an inkling for practical jokes. It was 
on a professional visit of Dr. Moncey. " Garrick 
was announced for Kins: Lear on that night, and 
when Moncey saw him in bed he expressed his 
surprise, and asked him if the play was to be 
changed. Garrick was dressed, but had his night- 
cap on, and the quilt was drawn over him to give 
him the appearance of being too ill to rise. Dr. 
M. expressed his surprise, as it was time for Gar- 
rick to be at the theatre to dress for King Lear. 
Garrick, in a languid and whining tone, told him 
that he was too much indisposed to perform him- 
self, but that there was an actor named Marr, so 
like him in figure, face, and voice, and so admira- 
ble a mimic, that he had ventured to trust the part 
to him, and was sure the audience would not per- 
ceive the difference. Pretending- that he began to 
feel worse, he requested Moncey to leave the room 



52 ILLUSION OF SPECTRES. 

in order that he might get a little sleep, but de- 
sired him to attend the theatre, and let him know 
the result. As soon as the doctor quitted the room, 
Garrick jumped out of bed and hastened to the 
theatre. Moncey attended the performance. Hav- 
ing left Garrick in bed, he was bewildered by the 
scene before him, sometimes doubting, and some- 
times being astonished at the resemblance between 
Garrick and Marr. At length, finding that the au- 
dience were convinced of Garrick's identity, Mon- 
cey began to suspect a trick had been practised 
upon him, and instantly hurried to Garrick's house 
at the end of the play ; but Garrick was too quick 
for him, and was found by Moncey in the same 
6tate of illness." These are truths which are in- 
deed stranger than fiction. 

Were a miracle once authenticated, our skepti- 
cism might cease ; but we cannot be convinced of 
supernatural agency till something be done or 
known which could not be so by common means, 
Or which, through the medium of deception or con- 
trivance, imposes on the mind such belief, of which 
impression Alston the painter once told Coleridge a 
melancholy story. 'Twas of a youth at Cambridge, 
who dressed himself up in white as a ghost to fright- 
en his companion, having first drawn the bullets 
from pistols which he kept at the head of his bed. 
As the apparition glided by his bed, the youth 
laughed and cried out, " Vanish ! I fear you not." 
The ghost did not obey him, and at length he reach- 
ed a pistol and fired at it, when, seeing the ghost 
immovable, and invulnerable as he supposed, a be- 
lief in a spirit instantly came over his mind, and 
convulsions succeeding, his extreme terror was 
soon followed by his death. 

I have read (I believe in Clarendon) that the 
decapitation of Charles I. was augured (after death J 



ILLUSION OF SPECTRES. 53 

from his coronation robes being of white velvet in- 
stead of purple ; and this, it was remembered, was 
the colour of a victim's death-garment ; and in 
Blennerhasset's history of James II., that the crown 
at his coronation tottered on his head, and at the 
same moment the royal arms fell from the altar of 
some London church. All this is too childish to 
be spoken of seriously, and reminds me of the Gen- 
eral Montecuculi, who on some saint's day had or- 
dered bacon in his omelette. At the moment it 
was served a peal of thunder shook his house, 
when he exclaimed, " Voila bien du bruit pour 
une omelette !" 

We wonder not to find Lily, into whose moth- 
eaten tomes I have sometimes peeped for amuse- 
ment, prating thus of consequences. There is an 
old paper of his graced with " the effigies of Mas 
ter Praise God Barebones," where, among othei 
judgments, the blindness of Milton is recorded as 
a penal infliction of the Deity for " that he writ 
two books against the kings, and Salmasius his de- 
fence of kings." But we do wonder at such a 
weakness in Sir Walter Raleigh that he should 
thus write in his History of the World, " The 
strangest thing I have read of in this kind being 
certainly true was, that the night before the battle 
of Novara, all the dogs which followed the French 
army ran from them to the Switzers ; and lo ! next 
morning the Switzers were beaten by the French." 
And yet a greater wonder is that so many sol- 
emn stories should have crept into our national le- 
gends in which there is no truth ; in which philos 
ophers and divines have very innocently combined 
to bewilder us. 

There is an assumed incident associated with a 
melancholy event in the noble family of Lans- 
downe most illustrative of my observation. Id 
E2 



54 ILLUSION OF SPECTRES. 

the " Literary Recollections" of the Rev. Richard 
Warner is recorded the interesting story of the 
apparition of Lord William Petty, at Bowood, re- 
lated to Mr. Warner by the Rev. Joseph Town- 
send, rector of Pewsey in Wiltshire, and " confirm- 
ed by the dying declaration of Dr. Alsop, of Came." 

It is affirmed that Lord William Petty, who was 
under the care of Dr. Priestley, the librarian, and 
the Rev. Mr. Jervis, his tutor, was attacked, at the 
age of seven, with inflammation of the lungs, for 
which Mr. Alsop was summoned to Bowood. Af- 
ter a few days, the young nobleman seemed to be 
out of danger; but, on a sudden relapse, the sur- 
geon was again sent for in the evening. 

" It was night before this gentleman reached 
Bowood, but an unclouded moon showed every ob- 
iect in unequivocal distinctness. Mr. Alsop had 
passed through the lodge gate, and was proceeding 
to the house, when, to his astonishment, he saw 
Lord William coming towards him, in all the buoy- 
ancy of childhood, restored, apparently, to health 
and vigour. ' I am delighted, my dear lord,' he 
exclaimed, ' to see you, but, for Heaven's sake, go 
immediately within doors ; it is death to you to be 
here at this time of night.' The child made no re- 
ply, but, turning round, was quickly out of sight. 
Mr. Alsop, unspeakably surprised, hurried to the 
house. Here all was distress and confusion, for 
Lord William had expired a few minutes before he 
reached the portico. 

" This sad event being with all speed announced 
to the Marquis of Lansdowne, in London, orders 
were soon received at Bowood for the interment 
of the corpse and the arrangement of the funeral 
procession. The former was directed to take place 
at High Wickham, in the vault which contained 
the remains of Lord William's mother ; the latter 



ILLUSION OF SPECTRES. 55 

was appointed to halt at two specified places during 
the two nights on which it would be on the road. 
Mr. Jervis and Dr. Priestley attended the body. 
On the first day of the melancholy journey, the lat- 
ter gentleman, who had hitherto said little on the 
subject of the appearance to Mr. Alsop, suddenly 
addressed his companion with considerable emotion 
in nearly these words : ' There are some very sin- 
gular circumstances connected with this event, Mr. 
Jervis, and a most remarkable coincidence between 
a dream of the late Lord William and our present 
mournful engagement. A few weeks ago, as I was 
passing by his room door one morning, he called 
me to his bedside : " Doctor," said he, " what is 
your Christian name ?" ' Surely,' said I, ' you 
know it is Joseph.' " Well, then," replied he, in 
a lively manner, " if you are a Josejyh, you can in- 
terpret a dream for me, which I had last night. I 
dreamed, doctor, that I set out upon a long jour- 
ney ; that 1 stopped the first night at Hungerford y 
whither I went without touching the ground ; that 
I flew from thence to Salt Hill, where I remained 
the next night, and arrived at High Wickham on 
the third day, where my dear mamma, beautiful as 
an angel, stretched out her arms and caught me 
within them." ' Now,' continued the doctor, ' these 
are precisely the places where the dear child's 
corpse will remain on this and the succeeding night 
before we reach his mother's vault, which is finally 
to receive it.'" 

Now here is a tissue of events as strange as they 
are circumstantial ; and I mght set myself to illus- 
trate the apparition by the agitated state of Mr. 
Alsop's mind, were it not for the utter fallacy of 
mis mysterious story, on which the late Rev. Mr. 
Jervis, of Brompton, whom I knew and esteemed, 
leemed it essential to publish "Remarks" in the 



56 FANTASY FROM MENTAL ASSOCIATION. 

year 1831. From these you will learn that Mr. 
Warner is in error regarding the " address, desig- 
nation, and age of the Hon. William Granville 
Petty, the nature and duration of his disorder, and 
the name of the place of interment." And then it 
comes out that neither Dr. Priestley nor Mr. Jer- 
vis attended the funeral, nor conversed at any time 
on the circumstance ; and, regarding Mr. Alsop's 
deathbed declaration, Mr. Jervis, who was in his 
intimate confidence, never heard of such a thing 
until Mr. Warner's volume was pointed out to him. 
This strange story, believed by good and wise 
men, involved a seeming mystery, until we read in 
Mr. Jervis's " Remarks" one simple sentence in 
reference to the gentleman by whom it was first 
told — that " the enthusiasm of his nature predis- 
posed him to entertain some visionary and roman- 
tic notions of supernatural appearances." 



FANTASY FROM MENTAL ASSOCIA- 
TION. 

" This is the very coinage of your brain : 
This bodiless creation, ecstasy 
Is very cunning in." — Hamlet. 

Cast. How delightful to wander thus among 
the reliques of that age, when her citizens, the 
colonists of Britain, migrated from imperial Rome, 
and built their Venta Silurum, or Caerwent, from 
the ruins of which these now mouldering walls 
were formed. As we trod those pictured pave- 
ments of Caerwent beneath the blue sky of yester- 
noon, I felt all the inspiration of Astrophel, and a 
pageantry of Roman patricians seemed to sweep 
along the fragments of those painted tesselae. 

" Lulled in the countless chambers of the brain, 
Our thoughts are link'd by many a hidden chain ; 
Awake but one, and lo ! what myriads rise, 
Each stamps his image as the other flies." 



FANTASY FROM MENTAL ASSOCIATION. 57 

There is a happy combination of antiquity and 
simplicity in this land of G-went. Almost within 
the shadow of the Roman Caerleon, the Monmouth- 
shire peasants, at Easter and Whitsuntide, assem- 
ble to plant fresh flowers on the graves of their 
relatives. How I love these old customs ! the 
chanting of the carol at Christmas ; its very home- 
liness, so redolent of love and friendship ; and that 
quaint old Moresco dance which was introduced to 
England by the noble Katherine of Arragon. Then 
the pastimes of Halloween and Hogmany in Scot- 
land, and the Walpurgis night of Germany, and 
the May-day in Ireland, the festival of their patron 
saint, and the Midsummer night when the bealfires 
cast a universal lumination over the fells of the 
green isle, and the still more sacred fire, lighted 
up in November, in worship of their social deity, 
Samhuin, whose potent influence charms the warm 
hearts of all the maids of Erin around the winter 
hearth of their homes. I listen unto these pleasures 
as if they were mine own, as children associate all 
the legends of their school histories with themselves 
and their own time. 

In every spot of this land of Wales the very 
names of the olden time are before us : the romaunt 
of Prince Arthur and his knights is ever present to 
our fancy, for he hath, as on the crag that towers 
over Edinburgh, a seat on many a mountain rock 
in Wales ; as the Cadair Arthur over Crickhowel, 
and the semicircle on Little Doward, and Maen 
Arthur on the moors of Cardigan. 

Astr. I never look on scenes like this without 
the echo of that beautiful apostrophe of Johnson, 
among the ruins of tona, whispering in my ear. 

Inspired by such an influence, I have roamed 
over the Isle of Elephanta, and gazed on its gor- 
geous pagoda hewn from the rock, and adorned by 



58 FANTASY FROM MENTAL ASSOCIATION. 

gigantic statues and mysterious symbols of the 
same eternal granite ; on the beauteous excava- 
tions of Salsette ; on the wonders of Elora, and on 
the classic reliques of Persepolis ; on the beautiful 
columns of Palmyra, the Tadmor in the wilderness, 
where Solomon built his "fenced city;" as well 
as those arabesque and Gothic temples, the abbeys 
and cathedrals of our own island. I, too, have al- 
most dared to think that superstition and idolatry 
might be forgiven for the splendours of its archi- 
tecture, even for the elevation of those giant blocks 
of Stonehenge and Abury, the mouldering altars 
of the Druidical priesthood, in the city consecrated 
to their god. 

So do I feel in this courtyard of Chepstow Cas- 
tle, whilom the Est-brig-hoel of Doomsday e Booke, 
and in later times so blended with English history. 
See you not the conqueror and his knights in 
panoply on prancing steeds before you ] See you 
not Fitz Osborne and Warren, its former lords, 
loom out upon your sight ] And, lo ! the portal 
opens, and the dungeon of Henry Martin, the regi- 
cide, yawns like a bottomless pit before us. The 
shade of Charles Stewart rises ; and again the 
phantom of Cromwell, uttering his epithets of 
scorn, as if the wanton Puritan were about to dash 
the ink in the face of his colleague as he signed 
the death-warrant of the king. And now the scene 
changes, and behold the doomed one is chained to 
those massive rings of iron, and there with groan- 
ing dies. 

Ev. I am most willing that you should thus in- 
dulge in your wild rhapsody, Astrophel, for it is 
the happy illustration of one potent cause of spec- 
tral illusion — association. There are few whose 
minds are not excited in some degree when they 
tread the localities of interesting events. By mem- 



FANTASY FROM MENTAL ASSOCIATION. 59 

ory and its combinations something like an inspired 
vision may often seem to come over us — a day- 
dream ; or, if we have been brooding over a sub- 
ject, or gazing on the relics of departed or absent 
love and friendship, or while we stand on a spot 
consecrated by genius, or when we have passed the 
scene of a murder, still will association fling around 
us its visionary shadows. 

Shortly after the death of Maupertuis, the presi- 
dent of the Academy of Berlin, Mr. Gleditsch, the 
curator of natural history, was traversing the hall 
in solitude, when he saw the phantom of the presi- 
dent standing in an angle of the room, with his eyes 
intensely fixed on him : an effect perfectly explica- 
ble by the association of intense impression of 
memory in the very arena of the president's former 
dignity. 

You will remember the story of a rich libertine 
told by Sir Walter Scott. Whenever he was alone 
in his drawing-room, he was so haunted by a spec- 
tral corps de ballet, that the very furniture was, as 
it were, converted into phantoms. To release him- 
self from this unwelcome intrusion, he retired to 
his country house, and here, for a while, he obtained 
the quiet which he sought. But it chanced that 
the furniture of his town house was sent to him in 
the country, and on the instant that his eyes fell on 
his drawing-room chairs and tables, the illusion 
came afresh on his mind. By the influence of as- 
sociation, the green figurantes came frisking and 
capering into his room, shouting in his unwilling 
ears, " Here we are ! here we are \" 

It is not, however, essential that there be sub- 
stance at all to excite these spectres. Idea alone 
is sufficient. 

Do you think it strange that a ghost should ap- 
pear fleshless and shadowy without some super- 



GO FANTASY FROM MENTAL ASSOCIATION. 

natural influence 1 Be assured that the only influ- 
ence exists in the sublime and intricate workings 
of that mind which in its pure state was itself an 
emanation from the Deity, which is only shadowed 
by illusion while in its earthly union with the brain, 
and which, on the dissolution of that brain, will 
again live uncombined, a changeless and eternal 
spirit. 

It is as easy to believe the power of mind in 
conjuring up a spectre as in entertaining a simple 
thought ; it is not strange that this thought may ap- 
pear imboclied, especially if the external senses be 
shut. If we think of a distant friend, do we not 
see a form in our mind's eye, and, if this idea be 
intensely defined, does it not become a phantom % 

" Phantasma est sentiendi actus, neque differt a 
sensione aliter quam fieri differt a factum esse." 

" A phantom is an act of thinking," &c. 

You have dipped deeply into Hobbes, Astrophel, 
and will correct me if I misquote this philosopher 
of Malmsbury. 

It was in Paris, at the soiree of Mons. Bellart, 
and a few days after the death of Marshal Ney, 
the servant, ushering in the Mareschal Aine, an- 
nounced Mons. Le Mareschal Ney. We were 
startled ; and may I confess to you that the eidolon 
of the Prince of Moskwa was, for a moment, as 
perfect to my sight as reality ? 

Now it is as easy to imagine a fairy infinitely 
small as a giant infinitely large. Between an idea 
and a phantom, then, there is only a difference in 
degree ; their essence is the same as between the 
simple and transient thought of a child and the in- 
tense and beautiful ideas of a Shakspeare, a Mil- 
ton, or a Dante. 

" Consider your own conceptions," said Imlac, 
" you will find substance without extension. An 



FANTASY FROM MENTAL ASSOCIATION. 61 

ideal form is no less real than material, but yet it 
has no extension." 

You hear I adopt the word idea as referring to 
the organ of vision, but sight is not the only sense 
subject to illusion. Hearing, taste, smell, touch, 
may be thus perverted, because the original im- 
pression was on the focus of all the senses, the 
brain. 

Indeed, two of these illusions are often synchro- 
nous ; as when a deep, sepulchral voice is uttered 
by a thin, filmy spectre, like the ghosts of Ossian, 
through which the moonbeams and the stars were 
seen to glimmer. But the illusion of the eye is by 
far the most common, and hence our adopted terms 
refer chiefly to the sight, as spectre, phantom, phan- 
tasm, apparition, eidolon, ghost, shadow, shade. 

The ghost, then, is nothing more than an intense 
idea. And as I have caught the mood of story- 
telling, listen to some analogies of those deep im- 
pressions on the mind which are the spring of all 
this fantasy. 

That destructive brainworm, Demonomania, is 
often excited in the mind of a proselyte by design- 
ing religious fanatics. Let the life of the selected 
person be ever so virtuous and exemplary, she (for 
it is usually on the softer sex that these impostures 
are practised) becomes convinced of the influence 
of the demon over her, and she is thus criminally 
taught the necessity of" conversion — is won over to 
the erroneous doctrine of capricious and unquali- 
fied election. 

These miseries do not always spring from self- 
interested impostors. The parent and the nurse, 
in addition to the nursery tales of fairies and of 
genii, too often inspire the minds of children with 
these diabolical phantoms. The effect is always 
detrimental — too often permanently destructive. I 
F 



62 FANTASY FROM MENTAL ASSOCIATION. 

will quote one case from the fourth volume of the 
Psychological Magazine, related by a student of 
the University of Jena. " A young girl, about nine 
or ten years old, had spent her birthday, with sev- 
eral companions of her own age, in all the gayety 
of youthful amusement. Her parents were of a 
rigorous devout sect, and had filled the child's 
head with a number of strange and horrid notions 
about the devil, hell, and eternal damnation. In 
the evening, as she was retiring to rest, the devil 
appeared to her and threatened to devour her. 
She gave a loud shriek, fled to the apartment 
where her parents were, and fell down, apparently 
dead, at their feet. A physician was called in, and 
she began to recover herself in a few hours. She 
then related what had happened, adding that she 
was sure she was to be damned. This accident 
was immediately followed by a severe and tedious 
nervous complaint." 

The ghost will not appear to tell us what will 
happen, but it may rise, and with awful solemnity, 
too, to tell us that which has happened. Such is 
the phantom of remorse — the shadow of conscience 
— which is, indeed, a natural penalty — a crime that 
carries with it its own consecutive punishment. 
Were the lattice of Momus fixed in the bosom, 
that window through which the springs of passion 
could be seen, there would be, I fear, a dark spot 
on almost every heart, as there is, to quote the 
Italian proverb, " a skeleton in every house." Of 
these pangs of memory, the pages both of history 
and fiction are teeming. Not in the visions of 
sleep alone, but in the glare of noonday, the appa- 
rition of a victim comes upon the guilty mind — 

"As when a gryphon through the wilderness, 
With winged course, o'er hill and moory dale, 
Pursues the Arimaspian, who, by stealth, 
Had from his wakeful custody purloined 
The guarded gold " 



FANTASY FROM MENTAL ASSOCIATION. 63 

Brutus, and Richard Plantagenet, and Clarence, 
and Macbeth, and Manfred, and Lorenzo, and 
Wallace, and Marmion, are but the archetypes of 
a very numerous family in real life, for Shakspeare, 
and Byron, and Schiller, and Scott have painted 
in high relief these portraits from the life. 

Many a real Manfred has trembled as he called 
up the phantom of Astarte ; many a modern Bru- 
tus has gazed at midnight on the evil spirit of his 
Caesar ; many a modern Macbeth points to the 
vacant chair of his Banquo, the ghost in his seat, 
and he mentally exclaims, " Hence, horrible shad- 
ow ! unreal mockery, hence !" 

Ida. Ay, and many a false heart, like Marmion, 
hears, as his life ebbs on the battle-field, the phan- 
tom voice of Constance Beverly: 

" The monk, with unavailing cares, 
Exhausted all the church's prayers. 
Ever he said, that, close and near, 
A lady's voice was in his ear, 
And that the priest he could not hear, 
For that she ever sung : 
' In the lost battle, borne down by the flying, 
Where mingles war's rattle with groans of the dying' — 
So the notes rung." 

We read in Moreton an exquisite story of the 
trial of a murderer, who had with firmness pleaded 
" not guilty." On a sudden, casting his eyes on 
the witness-box, he exclaimed, " This is not fair; 
no one is allowed to be witness in his own case." 
The box was empty, as you may suppose, but the 
eye of his conscience saw his bleeding victim gla- 
ring on him, and ready to swear to his murder. 
He felt that his fate was sealed, and pleaded guilty 
to the crime. 

" Deeds are done on earth. 
Which have their punishment ere the earth closes 
Upon the perpetrators. Be it the working 
Of the remorse-stained fancy, or the vision 
Distinct and real of unearthly being ; 



64 FANTASY FROM MENTAL ASSOCIATION. 

AH ages witness that, beside the couch 

Of the fell homicide, oft stalks the ghost 

Of him he slew, or shows his shadowy wound." 

It is this utter humiliation of the spirit, and the 
conviction of our polluted nature, that rankle so in- 
tensely in the wounded heart; and thence the re- 
pentant sinner feels so deeply that awful truth, 
that there is a Being infinitely more pure and god- 
like than himself. 

Ev. A very fertile source of spectral illusion is 
the devotion to peculiar studies and deep reflection 
on interesting subjects. Mons. Esquirol records 
the hallucination of a lady who had been reading 
a terrific account of the execution of a criminal. 
Ever after, in all her waking hours, and in every 
place, she saw above her left eye the phantom of a 
bloody head, wrapped in black crape — a thing so 
horrible to her, that she repeatedly attempted the 
commission of suicide. And of another lady, who 
had dipped so deeply into a history of witches, that 
she became convinced of her having, like Tarn 
O'Shanter's lady of the " cutty sark," been initiated 
into their mysteries, and officiated at their "sab- 
bath" ceremonies. 

Monsieur Andral, in his youth, saw in La Pitie 
the putrid body of a child covered with larvce, and 
during the next morning, the spectre of this corpse 
lying on his table was as perfect as reality. 

We have known mathematicians whose ghosts 
even appeared in the shape of coloured circles and 
squares, and Justus Martyr was haunted by the 
phantoms of flowers. Nay, our own Sir Joshua, 
after he had been painting portraits, sometimes 
believed the trees, and flowers, and posts to be men 
and women. 

I knew myself a bombardier, whose brain had 
been wounded in a battle. To this man a post was 



FANTASY FROM MENTAL ASSOCIATION. 65 

an enemy, and he would, when a sudden phrensy 
came on him, attack it in the street with his cane, 
and not leave it until he believed that his foeman 
was beaten or lay prostrate at his feet. 

Intense feeling, especially if combined with ap- 
prehension, often raises a phantom. The unhappy 

Sir R C , on being summoned to attend 

the Princess Charlotte of Wales, saw her form 
robed in white distinctly glide along before him as 
he sat in his carriage : a parallel, nay, an explana- 
tion to the interesting stories of Astrophel. 

Then the sting of conscience may warp a common 
object thus. Theodric, the Gothic king, unjustly 
condemned and put to death Boethius and Symrna- 
chus. It chanced at that time that a large fish was 
served to him at dinner, when his imagination di- 
rectly changed the fish's head into the ghastly face 
of Symmachus, upbraiding him with the murder 
of innocence ; and such was the effect of the phan- 
tom, that in a few days he died. But these spec- 
tral forms were seen, like the dagger of Macbeth, 
and the hand-writing on the wall, by none but the 
conscience-stricken, a proof of their being ideal, and 
not real. 

Not long after the death of Byron, Sir Walter 
Scott was engaged in his study, during the darken- 
ing twilight of an autumnal evening, in reading a 
sketch of his form and habits, his manners and opin- 
ions. On a sudden he saw, as he laid down his 
book and passed into his hall, the eidolon of his de- 
parted friend before him. He remained for some 
time impressed by the intensity of the illusion, 
which had thus created a phantom out of skins, 
and scarfs, and plaids, hanging on a screen in the 
Gothic hall of Abbotsford. 

I learn from Dr. T. that a certain lady was on 
the eve of her marriage, but her lover was killed 
5 F2 



66 FANTASY FROM MENTAL ASSOCIATION. 

as he was on his way to join her. An acute fevei 
immediately followed this impression; and on 
each subsequent day, when the same hour struck 
on the clock, she fell into a state of ecstasy, and 
believed that the phantom of her lover wafted her 
to the skies ; then followed a swoon of two or three 
hours' duration, and her diurnal recovery ensued. 

Cast. I know not if it will make me happier, 
Evelyn, but I have learned from your lips to believe 
that many of those legends which I held as poetic 
fictions may be the stories of minds in which, un- 
der the influence of devoted affection, the slightest 
semblance to an object so beloved may work up the 
phantom of far distant or departed forms. You 
may have read the romantic devotion of Henry 
Howard to the fair Geraldine, the flower of Eng- 
land's court, and the chivalrous challenge of her 
beauty to the knights of France. During his trav- 
els on the Continent he fell in with the alchymist 
Cornelius Agrippa, who, by his sleight cunning, 
showed in a magic mirror (as he said) to the doting 
mind of the earl his absent beauty reclining on a 
couch, and reading by the light of a waxen taper 
the homage of his pen to her exquisite beauty. 
Then there was an archbishop of the Euchaites, a 
professor of magic in the ninth century. The Em- 
peror Basil besought this pseudo-magus Santaba- 
ran for a sight of his long-lost and beloved son. 
He appeared before the emperor in a costume of 
splendour and mounted on a charger, and sinking 
into his arms, instantly vanished. This fantasy, and 
the glamourie of the witch of Falsehope over Mi- 
chael Scott, and the vision of the wondrous tale of 
Vatheck, and the legend of the Duke of Anjou in 
Froissart, might be the rude shadows of some slight 
phantasmagoria working on a sensitive or impas- 
sioned mind, may they not 1 



FANTASY FROM MENTAL ASSOCIATION. 67 

Ev. I am proud of my proselyte, lady. 

Ida. I presume these illusions may be wrought 
without the outlines of distinct shapes. I have ever 
thought the vision of Eliphaz the Tomanite more 
solemn, because an undefined shadow : " A vision 
is before our face, but we cannot discern the form 
thereof." And where the -profane poets have writ- 
ten thus mystically, they have risen in sublimity. 
Such is Milton's portraiture of death : 

" The other shape, 
If shape it could be called, which shape had none 
Distinguishable in member, joint, or limb ; 
Or substance might be called that shadow seemed, 
For each seemed neither." 

And in the splendid vision of Manfred, whose 
thoughts were, alas ! so polluted by passion — 

" I see 

The steady aspect of a clear, large star, 
But nothing more. 

Spirit. We have no form beyond the elements, 
Of which we are the mind and principle." 

And the idolaters profanely adopted this mystic 
metaphor when they inscribed their Temple of Isis 
at Sais — 

" I am whatever has been, is, and shall be, and no one hath ta- 
ken off" my veil." 

Ev. The phantom is often described as destitute 
of form. When Johnson was asked to define the 
ghost which appeared to old Cave, he answered, 
" Why, sir, something of a shadowy being." And 
there is a sublimity and a mystery in that which is 
indefinite. Two very deep philosophers have, 
however, differed in opinion regarding the effect ot 
darkness and obscurity on the mind. Burke al- 
ludes to darkness as a cause of the sublime and ter- 
rific (and he is supported by Tacitus — " Omne ig- 
notum pro magnifico est") ; Locke, as not natural- 



C8 FANTASY FROM MENTAL ASSOCIATION. 

ly a cause of terror, but as it is associated by nurses 
and old crones with ghosts and goblins. 

I will not split this difference, but I believe 
Burke is in the right. Obscurity is doubtless deep- 
ly influential in raising phantoms : that which is 
indefinable becomes almost of necessity a ghost. 
If the ghosts of Shakspeare did not appear, the il- 
lusion would be more impressive. In darkness 
and night, therefore, the ghosts burst their cere- 
ments, the spirits walk abroad, and the ghost-seers 
revel in all their superstitious glory. The Druids, 
those arch impostors, acted their mysteries in the 
depth of shadowy groves ; and the heathen idols 
are half hidden both in the hut of the American In- 
dian and the temples of Indostan. It is true, chil- 
dren shut their eyes when frightened, but this is in- 
stinctive, and because they think it real ; but, in 
truth, they ever dread the notion of darkness. By 
the fancy of a timid mind, in the deepening gloom 
of twilight, a withered oak has been fashioned into 
a living monster ; and I might occupy our evening 
in recounting the tales of terror to which a decay- 
ed trunk once gave birth among some village gos- 
sips in the weald of Sussex. 

There are few who " revisit the glimpses of the 
moon," whose romantic humour leads them abroad 
about nightfall, who have not sometimes been in- 
fluenced by feeling somewhat like fantasy during 
the indistinct vision of twilight ; the dim emana- 
tions of the crescent, or the more deceptive illusion 
of an artificial luminous point irradiating a circum- 
ambient vapour. Through the magnifying power 
of this floating medium the image may be fashion- 
ed into all the fancied forms of poetical creation. 

At a midnight hour, by a blue taper light, and 
in a ruined castle, a simple tale will become a ro- 
mance of terror. 



FANTASY FROM MENTAL ASSOCIATION. G9 

I have spoken thus to introduce an incident 
which occurred years ago, and yet my mind's eye 
shows it to me as if it were of yesterday. 

It was in the year , on the eve of my pre- 
senting myself at the college for my diploma. I 
had been deeply engaged during the day in tracing, 
with some fellow-students, the distribution of the 
nervous ganglia. The shades of evening had closed 
over us as our studies were nearly completed, and 
one by one my companions gave me good-night, 
until, about ten o'clock, I was left alone, still po- 
ring over the subject of my study by the dim light 
of a solitary taper. On a sudden I was startled by 
the loud pealing of a clock, which, striking twelve, 
warned me most unexpectedly of the solemn hour 
of midnight ; for I was not otherwise conscious of 
this lapse of time. For a moment I seemed in ut- 
ter darkness, until, straining my eyes, a blue and 
lurid glimmer floated around me. A chilliness 
crept over me, and I had a strange indefinable con- 
sciousness of utter desolation — of being immured 
in some Tartarean cavern, or pent among icy rocks, 
for the cold night- wind was sweeping in hollow 
murmurs through the vaults. In the blue half-twi- 
light I was at length sensible that I was not alone, 
but in the presence of indistinct shadowy forms, si- 
lent and motionless as the grave ; and by that aw- 
ful sensation of the sublime which springs from 
obscurity, I conceived that I had suffered transmi- 
gration, or had glided unconsciously through the 
gates of Hades, and that these were the unbodied 
spirits — the manes of the departed, in sleep ; and 
then I thought the sounds were not those of the 
wind, but the hollow moaning of those restless 
spirits that could not sleep. By some species of 
glamourie which I could not comprehend, the 
gloom appeared to brighten by slow degrees, and 



70 FANTASY FROM MENTAL ASSOCIATION. 

the forms became more distinct. When we are in- 
volved in mystery, the sense of touch is instinctive- 
ly brought to its analysis. I put forth my hand, 
and found that my eyes were not mocked with a 
mere vision ; for it came in contact with something 
icy, cold, and death-like — it was an arm clammy 
and cadaverous that fell across my own ; and as 
the smell of death came over me, a corpse rolled 
into my lap. 

The moaning of the breeze increased, and the 
screech-owl shrieked as she flitted unseen around 
me. At this moment a scream of agony was heard 
in the distance, as of some mortal frame writhing 
in indescribable anguish, while a hoarse and wiz- 
ard voice cried, "Endure! endure!" It ceased; 
and then I heard a pattering and flutter, and then 
a shrill squeaking, as of some tiny creatures that 
were playing their gambols in the darkness which 
again came round me. On a sudden all was hush- 
ed, and there was a glimmer of cold twilight, as 
when a horn of the moon, as Astrophel would say, 
comes out from an eclipse ; and then a brighter 
gleam of bluer light burst through the gloom, at 
which I confess I started, and my hand dropped 
into a pool of blood. Like the astonished Tarn 
O'Shanter, it seemed that I was alone in the cham- 
ber of death, or the solitary spectator of some de- 
mon incantation, or of some wholesale murder. 
There were some forms blue and livid, some ca- 
daverous, of '* span-long, wee, unchristened bairns,'* 
and others, deluged in blood and impurity, lay 
around me ; one pale and attenuated form, that 
more than mocked the delicate beauty of the Me- 
dicean Venus, lay naked on the ground. On the 
athletic form of another the moonbeam fell in a 
glory, as if the fabled legend of Endymion was re- 
alized before my eyes. 



FANTASY FROM CEREBRAL EXCITEMENT. 71 

Astr. And 

Ev. Ay, now for the secret — the materiel of this 
wild vision. The truth was, I had dropped asleep 
in the dissecting-room ; the candle had burned 
out ; and thus, with a copious supply of dead 
bodies, the howling of the tempest, the purple 
storm-clouds, the blue gleams of moonshine, and 
bats, and screech-owls, and the screams of patients 
in the surgical wards, and, withal, the hoarse voices 
of those croaking comforters, the night-nurses, I 
have placed before you a harmony of horrors that 
might not shame a legend of Lewis or a Radcliff- 
ian romance. 

Simple as this will be the explanation of many 
and many a tale of mystery, although fraught with 
accumulated horrors, like those of the " Castle of 
Udolpho ;" and if, putting aside that ultra-roman- 
tic appetite for the marvellous, we have courage to 
attempt their analysis, the pages of demonology 
will be shorn of half their terrors, the gulf of super- 
stition will be illumined by the light of philosophy, 
and creation stand forth in all its harmonious and 
beautiful nature. 



FANTASY FROM CEREBRAL EXCITE- 
MENT. 

"■ A false creation, 
Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain." 

Macbeth. 

Astr, I will grant the influence of all these in- 
spiring causes, Evelyn, but it is not under adventi- 
tious circumstances alone that the gifted seer is pre- 
sented with his visions, but also in the clear day- 
light, in the desert, or in a mountain hut ; surround- 
ed, too, by those who are content with the common 
faculties of man. 



72 FANTASY FROM CEREBRAL EXCITEMENT. 

Among many of the Gothic nations especially, 
women were the peculiar professors of divination 
and magic. The Volva-Seidkona, the Fiolkyngi, 
the Visindakona, and the Nornir were the oracu- 
lar priestesses, the chief of whom was the Hexa. 
These had the faculty of insight into skulda, or the 
future, and foreknew the doom of mortals : either 
to the niflheiner, or hell, over which presided the 
half blue and half flesh-tinted Hela, the goddess of 
Death, who, as the Cimbric peasants believed, dif- 
fused pestilence and plague as she rode over the 
earth on her three-footed horse Hellhest ; or to the 
Valhalla, or paradise of Odin. And this we read 
in the " Edda." 

Ev. Gramercy, Astrophel, you run up the cata- 
logue of these weird women as you were involved 
in their unholy league. Have a care, or we must 
have you caged. There was once a Dr. Fordage, 
a divine of Berkshire (as it is recorded in a strange 
book, " Demonium Meridianum, or Satan at Noon- 
day"), accused of seeing spectres, such as " drag- 
ons with tails eight yards long, with four formida- 
ble tusks, and spouting fire from their nostrils." 
Remember the peril, and beware. 

Astr. Oh, sir, you must impeach by wholesale, 
for clairvoyance or second sight prevails in some 
regions as a national faculty. 

The courses of my travel have shown to me this 
inspiration, especially among the elevated parts of 
the globe. The Hartz and other forests in Germa- 
ny, the Alps and Pyrenees, the Highlands of Scot- 
land, the hills of Ireland, the mountains of the Isle 
of Man, and the frozen fields of Iceland and Nor- 
way, abound in ghostly legends. Among the passes 
of the Spanish Sierras, also, it is believed that the 
Saludadores and the Covenanters saw angels on the 
hill side during their wanderings and persecutions. 



FANTASY FROM CEREBRAL EXCITEMENT. 73 

Ev. And how clear is the natural reason of this. 
As in the wide desert, so on the mountain, nature 
assumes her wildest form. Of the awful sublimity 
of clouds, and vapours, and lightnings, among the 
gorges of the giant rocks, of the Alps, and the Ap- 
ennines, and the deep and dreadful howling of a 
storm in the icy bosom of a glacier, or bellowing 
among the crumbling walls of ruined castles, the 
lowland er can form no idea. 

The mind both of the Bedouin Arab, and espe- 
cially of the mountaineer, is thus cradled in ro- 
mance. If that mind be rude and uncultivated, cre- 
dulity and superstition are its inmates ; ignorance 
being the common stamp of the seers, except in rare 
instances of deep reflectors or melancholy book- 
worms, whose abstractions, like those of Allan Bane, 
and Brian, and MacAulay, assume the prophetic 
faculty ; the seer by its power perceiving, as he 
declares, things distant or future as if they were 
before his eye. 

The superstitious legends of Martin, the historian 
of the Western Isles, and the precepts for the prac- 
tice and governance of this clairvoyance, prove a 
deep interest and impression, but not a mystery. 
Among the defiles of Snsefel, in Man, the belief is 
prevalent : " A Manksman amid his lonely mount- 
ains reclines by some romantic stream, the mur- 
murings of which lull him into a pleasing torpor ; 
half slumbering, he sees a variety of imaginary be- 
ings, which he believes to be real. Sometimes 
they resemble his traditionary idea of fairies, and 
sometimes they assume the appearance of his 
friends and neighbours. Presuming on these 
dreams, the Manks enthusiast predicts some future 
event." Here is a local reason, as among the icy 
mountains of the North. Cheffer writes that, thus 
influenced, the melancholy of the Laplanders ren- 
G 



74 FANTASY FROM CEREBRAL EXCITEMENT. 

ders them ghost-seers, and the dream and the vision 
are ever believed by them to be prophetic. 

Cast. It is the contemplation of these Alpine 
glories that gilds with so bright a splendour of im- 
agery the romances of mountain poets, the wild le- 
gends of Ossian, and those which spangle, as with 
sparkling jewels, the pages of the " Lay," the 
" Lady of the Lake," and " Marmion." It may 
excite the jealousy of a classic, but the ghosts and 
heroes of Ossian, as very acute critics decide, are 
cast in a finer mould than the gods of Homer. 

You smile at me, most learned clerks of Oxen- 
ford, yet I believe the critics are correct. When 
I was prowling in the king's private library in 
Paris, M. Barbier placed in my hands two of the 
most precious tomes, the folio " Evangelistarium," 
or prayer-book of Charlemagne, and the 4to edition 
of Ossian. The one is sanctified by its subject, and 
rich beyond compare in illuminations of gold and 
colours, and priceless in the eyes of the biblioma- 
niac. The other was the favourite hook of Napoleon, 

Fancy that you hear him in the solitude of St. 
Cloud, poring in deep admiration over passages 
like this : 

" Fingal drew his sword, the blade of dark-brown 
Luno. The gleaming path of the steel winds 
through the gloomy ghost. The form fell shape- 
less into air, like a column of smoke as it rises from 
the half-extinguished furnace. The spirit of Loda 
shrieked, as, rolled into himself, he rose on the 
wind. Inistore shook at the sound. The waves 
heard it on the deep, and stopped in their course 
w T ith fear." 

And yet these beauties, like the pictures of Tur- 
ner, are looked upon with a smile of wondering 
pity or of scorn, simply because these home-keep- 
ing critics have never scaled the mountain, or 
breasted the storm for its wild and purple glory. 



FANTASY FROM CEREBRAL EXCITEMENT. 75 

Among the mountains of Wales it was my for- 
tune to light on many a wild spot, where the poetry 
of nature fell like the sun-light on the heart of the 
peasant. In the beautiful vale of Neath there is 
tne tiny hamlet of Pont-Neath-Vechan. I shall 
ever remember how fair and beautiful it seemed 
as I descended from the mountain rocks of Pen y 
Craig, the loftiest of the Alps of Glamorgan, which 
enclose Ystrad-Vodwg, the " village of the green 
valley." Around its humble cottages is spread the 
most romantic scenery of Brecknockshire. The 
tributaries of its rolling river there blend their wa- 
ters — those torrent streams which Drayton has im- 
personated in the Polyolbion as 

" Her handmaids Melte sweet, clear Hepste, and Tragath." 

On the Melte is the wondrous cavern of Porth- 
Mawr, through which, in Stygian darkness, flows 
this Acherontic river. And on the clear Hepste is 
that glittering waterfall which, in the midst of leafy 
woods and bosky glens, throws itself, like a min- 
iature Niagara, from the rock, forming an arch of 
crystal, beneath which the traveller and the peas- 
ant cross the river's bed on the moss-green and slip- 
pery limestone. Oh ! for the pencil of a Salvator, 
the pen of Torquato, to picture the wild vision 
which was before my eyes when I sought shelter be- 
neath this crystal canopy from the deluge of a thun- 
der cloud. The lightning flash gleamed through 
the waterfall, forming a prismatic rainbow of trans- 
cendent beauty, while the deep peal swept through 
the echoing dingles, and the crimson-spotted trout 
leaped in sportive summersets over the water-ousel 
that was walking quietly on the gravel, deep in the 
water. 

In this wilderness of nature, no wonder that le- 
gends should prevail : that fairies are seen sporting 
in 'he Hepste cascades, and that in the dark cavern 



76 FANTASY FROM CEREBRAL EXCITEMENT. 

of Cwm-Rhyd y Rhesg, the ghosts of headless la- 
dies so often affright the romantic skirls of these wild 
valleys. No wonder that they believe the giant 
Idris, enthroned on his mountain chair, shook the 
three pebbles from his shoe into that pool which 
bears the name of the Lake of Three Grains ; or 
that the shrieks of Prince Idwal are to this day 
heard by the peasants of Snowdonia amid the 
storm which bursts over the purple crag of the 
Twll-dhu, and thunder clouds cast a deeper and a 
darker shade over the black water of Lyn Idwal. 
Nay, I myself may confess, that as I have stood on 
the peaks of Y Wyddfa, while the white and crim- 
son clouds rolled beneath me in fleecy masses, 
whirling around the cone of Snowdon, I have for 
a moment believed that I was something more than 
earthly. And when enveloped in the mysterious 
cloud which rests on the head of Mount Pilate in 
Lucern, I gave half my faith to the legend of the 
guide, that storm and human trouble, and the perils 
of flocks in the vicinity of its triple peak, were the 
result of the self-immersion of Pontius Pilate in its 
lake, an act of remorse at his impious adjudication. 
This unhallowed water was regarded with dismay, 
and not a pebble might be cast to make a ripple 
on its surface and disturb the quiet of the traitor. 
But lo ! in the sixteenth century the spell was 
proved to be a fable by an assemblage of bold 
Switzers, who hurled rocks into the lake, and swam 
across its water without the slightest indication of 
displeasure from this kelpie of the Brundeln Alp. 
Ev. The truth is sweeter on your lips than fic- 
tion, Castaly. Whisper again in the ear of As- 
trophel the penalties entailed on the indulgence of 
second sight. Dr. Abercrombie knew a gentleman 
who could, by his will, call up spirits, and seers 
have assured me that the sight is, to a certain de- 



FANTASY FROM CEREBRAL EXCITEMENT. 77 

gree, voluntary : by fixing the attention on a sub- 
ject during the dark hour, the power of divination j 
may be increased, but it cannot be controlled. But 
those who indulge in those illusions are often driven 
on to a degree of phrensy equal to the agonizing 
penalty of Frankenstein ; even as the witch of En- 
dor trembled when she raised before Saul the sr^irit 
of Samuel, or the Iberian princess Pyrene, who, 
like Sin, fled from the child-serpent which was 
born from her dalliance with Hercules. 

The effort of the seers, nay, the mysterious or- 
deal to which they submit themselves, are often so 
painful, that they gaze with strained eyeballs, and 
fainting occurs as the vision appears. When the 
dark hour is over, they will exclaim with MacAulay, 
" Thank God, the mist hath passed from my spirit !" 
Indeed, Sir Walter Scott observed in those who 
presumed to this faculty, " shades of mental aber- 
ration which caused him to feel alarmed for those 
who assumed the sight." Archibald, duke of Ar- 
gyle, was a seer, and it is written that he was 
haunted by blue phantoms, the origin, I believe, of 
our epithet for melancholy — " blue devils." 

At the foot of yonder purple mountains in Mor- 
gany once lived Colonel Bowen, a doer of evil 
works, whose spectral visitations fill so many pages 
of Baxter's " Essay on the Reality of Apparitions." 
This deep historian of the realm of shadows tells 
that the wizard was worn down by the phantoms 
of his evil conscience ; that he imprisoned himself 
and his boy, who was, I presume, a sort offa?nulus, 
in a small castle ; that he walked and talked of di- 
ablerie, and I know not what miseries, in his sleep. 

I have myself known those who see spectres 
when they shut their eyes, before an attack of de- 
lirium, which vanish on the readmission of light ; 
and in imaginative minds, under peculiar condi- 



78 FANTASY FROM CEREBRAL EXCITEMENT. 

tions, intense reading may so shut out the real 
world, that an effort is required to re-establish 
vision. In Polydori's " Vampyre" it is recorded 
that they had been reading phantasmagoria and 
ghost stories in Germany, thereby highly exciting 
the sensitive mind of Percy Bysshe Shelley. Anon, 
on Byron's reading some lines of Christabel, 
Shelley ran from the room, and was found leaning 
on a mantel-piece bedewed with cold and clammy 
perspiration ; and it is enough to read of the gloom 
which marked the minds of those geister-sehers, 
the proselytes of Swedenborg (among whom he 
ranked the King of Prussia), to reclaim all the 
converts to his strange religion. 

Astr. There is a bright side, Evelyn. In Ger- 
many, those children which are born on a Sunday 
are termed " Sontag's kind," and are believed to 
be endowed with the faculty of seeing spirits; these 
are gifted with a life of hajipiness. 

Ev. And you believe it. Well, for a moment I 
grant its truth ; but it is the reverse in Scotland ; 
the vision is almost ever cheerless, and prophetic 
of wo. " Does the sight come gloomy o'er your 
spirit ]" asks MacAulay. " As dark as the shadow 
of the moon when she is darkened in her course in 
heaven, and prophets foretel of future times." 
And the anathema of Roderich Dhu's prophet Brian 
is dark and gloomy as the legend of his mysterious 
birth, or its prototype, the impure fable of Atys, 
and the loves of Jupiter and Sangaris. 

Cast. If I am the sylph to charm this moody 
gentleman from his reveries, I will warn him in 
the words of a canzonet, even of the 17th century : 

" Yet, rash astrologer, refrain ; 
Too dearly would be won 
The prescience of another's pain, 
If purchased by thine own." 

And I will tell him what Collins writes on the 



FANTASY FROM CEREBRAL EXCITEMENT. 79 

perils of the seer, in his " Ode on Highland Super- 
stition :" 

" How they whose sight such dreary dreams engross, 
With their own vision oft astonished droop, 
When o'er the wat'ry strath or quaggy moss 

They see the gliding ghosts imbodied troop. 
They know what spirit brews the stormful day, 
And, heartless, oft like moody madness stare 
To see the phantom train their secret work prepare." 

He listens not to me. Nay, then, I will try the 
virtue of a spell that has oft shed a ray of light over 
the dark hour of the ghost-seer. I will whisper 
music in thine ear, Astrophel. The fiend of Saul 
was chased away by the harp of David ; the gloomy 
shadows of Allan MacAulay were brightened by 
the melody of Annot Lyle ; and the illusion of 
Philip of Spain, that he was dead and in his grave, 
was dispelled by the exquisite lute of the Rose of 
the Alhambra. 

Astr. My thanks, fair Castaly; yet wherefore 
should I claim your syren spells \ My visions are 
delightful as the inspiration of the improvisatore, 
and cany not the penalty of the monomaniac. But 
say, if there be (in vulgar words) a crack in this 
cranium of mine, may not this crack, as saith the 
learned Samuel Parr, " let in the light V 

If prophetic visions in the early ages came over 
the dying, why not in ours ] 

The last solemn speech of Jacob was an inspired 
prophecy of the miraculous advent : " The sceptre 
shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from 
between his feet, until Shiloh come, and to him 
shall the gathering of the people be." And is it 
profanation to ask, why may not the departing 
sjDirit of holiness, even now, prophesy to us ? 

As we see the stars from the deep well, so may 
such spirits look into futurity from the dark abyss 
of dissolution. In some cases of little children, I 



80 FANTASY FROM CEREBRAL EXCITEMENT. 

have learned that this unearthly feeling has caused 
them to anticipate their dying. How pathetically 
does John Evelyn, in his Diary, allude to the an- 
ticipation of his little boy — " an angel in body and 
in mind, who died of a quartan ague, in his fifth 
year. The day before he died he called to me, 
and told me that, for all I loved him so dearly, I 
should give my house, lands, and all my fine 
things to his brother." 

The dying seem indeed themselves to feel that 
they are scarcely of this world. Holcroft, a short 
time before his death, hearing his children on the 
stairs, said to his wife, " Are those your children, 
Louisa?" as if he were already in another exist- 
ence — as if the human mind itself were perusing 
the celestial volume of the recording angel, the 
awful book of fate. 

When the northern Indian is stretched on the 
torture, even amid his agonies, an inspired combi- 
nation of belief and hope presents him with vivid 
pictures of the blessed regions of the Kitchi Mani- 
tou. The faithful Mussulman, in the agonies of 
death, feels assured that his enchanted sight is 
blessed by the beautiful houris in Mohammed's 
pa adise. The Runic warriors, also, as the Ice- 
landic chronicles record in their epitaphs, when 
mortally wounded in battle, " fall, laugh, and ex- 
pire ;" and in this expiration, like the dying war- 
riors of Homer, predict the fate of their enemies. 

As the venom of the serpent curdled the blood 
in the veins of Regner Lodbrog, the Danish king, 
he exclaimed, with ecstasy, " What new joys arise 
within me ! I am dying ! I hear Odin's voice ; 
the gates of his palace are already opened, and 
half-naked maidens advance to meet me. A blue 
scarf heightens the dazzling whiteness of their bo- 
soms ; they approach, and present me with the 



FANTASY FROM CEREBRAL EXCITEMENT. 81 

soul-exhilarating beverage in the bloody sculls of 
my enemies.' ' 

Ev. In that awful moment, when the spirit is 

" Soon from his cell of clay- 
To burst a seraph in the blaze of day," 

the mind is prone to yield to those feelings which 
it might perhaps, in the turmoil of the busy world 
and at another period, deem superstition. There 
is something in the approach of death of so holy 
and so solemn a nature, something so unlike life 
in the feeling of the dying, that in this transition, 
although we cannot compass the mystery, some 
vision of another world may steal over the retiring 
spirit, imparting to it a proof of its immortality. I 
do not fear to yield, for once, my approval of this 
devout passage of Sir Thomas Brown : " It is ob- 
served that men sometimes, upon the hour of their 
departure, do speak and reason above themselves ; 
for then the soul begins to be freed from the liga- 
ments of the body, and to discourse in a strain 
above mortality." It is on the verge of eternity, 
and the laws and principles of vitality may be al- 
ready repealed by the Being who conferred them. 
The arguments, then, regarding the phenomena of 
life may fail when life has all but ceased. 

With this admission, I may counsel Astrophel 
as to the danger of adducing heathen history or 
fiction in proof of this solemn question. 

Cast. And yet Shakspeare, for one, with a poet's 
license, brings before us, as you do, the dying hour 
as the cause of prophetic vision. John of Gaunt, 
on his deathbed, mutters, 

" Methinks I am a prophet new inspired, 
And thus expiring do foretel of him," 

and then predicts the fate of Richard. 
And remember, the dying Hotspur says, 
6 



82 FANTASY FROM CEREBRAL EXCITEMENT. 

" Now could I prophesy, 
But that the icy hand of death," &c. 

Ev. Well, I will not controvert your creed, As- 
trophel ; rather let me illustrate some of your ap- 
parent mysteries by simple analogy. 

As in these extreme moments of life, so in the 
hour of extreme danger, when an awful fate is im- 
pending, and the world and our sacred friendships 
are about to be lost to us, a vision of our absent 
friends will pass before us. with all the light of real- 
ity. We read in the writings of Dr. Conolly of a 
person who, in danger of being swamped on the 
Eddystone Rock, saw the phantoms of his family 
passing distinctly before him ; and these are the 
words of the English Opium-eater : "I was once 
told by a near relative of mine, that, having in her 
childhood fallen into a river, and being on the very 
verge of death but for the critical assistance which 
reached her, she saw in a moment her whole life in 
its minutest incidents arrayed before her simulta- 
neously, as in a mirror, and she had a faculty de- 
veloped as suddenly for comprehending the whole 
and every part." 

Now, although the coming on of death is often 
attended by that slight delirium indicated by the 
babbling of green fields, and the playing with flow- 
ers, and the picking of the bedclothes, and the 
smiling on the fingers' ends, yet in others some op- 
pressive or morbid cause of insanity may be re- 
moved by the moribund condition. In the words of 
Aretseus, " The system has thrown off many of its 
impurities, and the soul, left naked, was free to ex- 
ercise such energies as it still possessed." 

I will glance in illustration at these interesting 
cases : from Zimmerman, of an insane woman of 
Zurich, who " a few hours before her death be- 
came perfectly sensible, and wonderfully elo- 



Q 



FANTASY FROM CEREBRAL EXCITEMENT. 83 

quent;" from Dr. Perceval, of a female idiot, 
who, as she was dying of consumption, evinced the 
highest powers of intellect ; from Dr. Marshall, of 
the maniac who became completely rational some 
hours previous to his dissolution ; and from Dr. 
Hancock, of the Quaker, who, from the condition 
of a drivelling idiot, became, shortly before his 
death, so completely rational as to call his family 
together, and, as his spirit was passing from him, 
bestow on them with pathetic solemnity his last 
benediction." 

Thus your impressive records are clearly ex- 
plained by pathology; and, perhaps, unconscious of 
this, Mrs. Opie has a fine illustration in her "Fa- 
ther and Daughter," the mind of the maniac pa- 
rent being illumined before his death by a beam of 
reason. 

But in the languid brain of an idiot excitement 
may even produce rationality. 

Samuel Tuke tells us of a domestic servant who 
lapsed into a state of complete idiocy. Some time 
after she fell into typhus fever, and as this pro- 
gressed, there was a real development of mental 
power. At that stage, when delirium lighted up 
the minds of others, she was rational, because the 
excitement merely brought up the nervous energy 
to its proper point. As the fever abated, however, 
she sunk into her idiot apathy, and thus continued 
until she died. It was but the transient gleam of 
reason. 



84 FANTASY FROM CEREBRAL CONGESTION". 



FANTASY FROM CEREBRAL CONGES- 
TION.— OPIUM. 

" Have we eaten of the insane root, 
That takes the reason prisoner '(" — Macbeth. 

Ev. The contrasts to these phantoms of blind 
superstition are those of the overstrained condition 
of the mind. The Creator has ordained the brain 
to be the soil in which the mind is implanted or 
developed. This brain, like the cornfield, must 
have its fallow, or it is exhausted and reduced in 
the degree of its high qualities. In our intellect- 
ual government, therefore, we should ever adopt 
that happy medium, equally remote from the big- 
otry of the untutored and the ultra-refinement of 
the too highly-cultivated mind. 

It is not essential that I should now offer you 
more than a hint, that the essence of the gloomy 
ghosts of deep study, like the melancholy phan- 
toms and oppressive demons of the nightmare, con- 
sists in the accumulation of black blood about the 
brain and the heart ; and a glance at phrenology 
would explain to you how the influence of that 
blood on the various divisions of the brain will call 
up in the mind these " Hydras, and Grorgons, and 
Chimeras dire." 

The learned Pascal constantly saw a gulf yawn- 
ing at his side, but he was aware of his illusion. 
He was, however, always strapped in his chair, 
lest he should fall into this gulf, especially while 
he was working the celebrated problem of the cy- 
cloid al curve. 

A distinguished nobleman, who but lately guided 
the helm of state in England, was often annoyed 
by the spectre of a bloody head ; a strange coinci- 
dence with the phantom of the Count Duke d'Oli- 
varez, the minister of Philip of Spain. 






FANTASY FROM CEREBRAL CONGESTION. 85 

From Dr. Conolly we learn the curious illusion 
of a student of anatomy, who, during his ardent de- 
votion to his study, confidently believed that there 
was a town in his deltoid muscle. 

And, from Dr. Abercrombie, the case of a gen- 
tleman of high literary attainments, who, when 
closely reading in his study, was repeatedly annoy- 
ed by the intrusive visits of a little old woman in 
a black bonnet and mantle, with a basket on her 
arm. So filmy, however, was this phantom, that 
the door-lock was seen through her. Supposing 
she had mistaken her way, he politely showed her 
the door, and she instantly vanished. It was the 
change of posture which effected this disappear- 
ance, by altering the circulation of the brain-blood, 
then in a state of partial stagnation. 

My friend, Dr. Johnson, has told me of a gentle- 
man of great science, who conceived that he was 
honoured by the frequent visits of spectres. They 
were at first refined and elegant, both in manners 
and in conversation, which, on one occasion, as- 
sumed a witty turn, and quips, and puns, and satire 
were the order of the evening ; so that he was 
charmed with his ghostly visiters, and sought no 
relief. On a sudden, however, they changed into 
demoniac fiends, uttering expressions of the most 
degraded and unholy nature. He became alarm- 
ed, and depletion soon cured him of his fantasy. 

A Scotch lawyer had long laboured under this 
kind of monomania, which at length proved fatal. 
His physician had long seen that some secret griei 
was gnawing the heart and sucking the life-blood 
of his patient, and he at last extorted the confes- 
sion that a skeleton was ever watching him from 
the foot of his bed. The physician tried various 
modes to dispel the illusion, and once placed him- 
self in the field of the vision, and was not a little 
H 



86 FANTASY FROM CEREBRAL CONGESTION. 

terrified when the patient exclaimed that he saw 
the scull peering at him over his left shoulder. 

The " Martyr Philosopher," too, in the " Diary 
of a Physician," saw, shortly preceding his death, 
a figure in black deliberately putting away the 
books in his study, throwing his pens and ink into 
the fire, and folding up his telescope, as if they 
were now useless. The truth is, he himself had 
been engaged in that occupation, but it was his own 
disordered imagination that raised the spectre. 

You will believe from these illustrations, Astro- 
phel, that Seneca is right in his aphorism, 

" Nullum fit magnum ingenium sine mistura dementise." 
And Pope, also, in his unconscious imitation, 
" Great wits to madness nearly are allied." 

Lord Castlereagh, when commanding in early life 
a militia regiment in Ireland, was stationed one 
night in a large, desolate country house, and his 
bed was at one end of a long, dilapidated room, 
while at the other extremity a great fire of wood 
and turf had been prepared within a huge, gaping, 
oldfashioned chimney. Waking in the middle of 
the night, he lay watching from his pillow the grad- 
ual darkening of the embers on the hearth, when 
suddenly they blazed up, and a naked child step- 
ped from among them upon the floor. The figure 
advanced slowly towards Lord Castlereagh, rising 
in stature at every step, until, on coming within 
two or three paces of his bed, it had assumed the 
appearance of a ghastly giant, pale as death, with 
a bleeding wound on the brow, and eyes glaring 
with rage and despair. Lord Castlereagh leaped 
from his bed and confronted the figure in an atti- 
tude of defiance. It retreated before him, dimin- 
ishing as it withdrew in the same manner that it 
had previously shot up and expanded ; he follow- 



FANTASY FROM CEREBRAL CONGESTION. 87 

ed it, pace by pace, until the original childlike 
form disappeared among the embers. He then 
went back to his bed, and was disturbed no more. 

The melancholy story of the Requiem of Mo- 
zart is an apt and sublime illustration of this influ- 
ence. It was written by desire of a solemn person- 
age, who repeatedly, he affirmed, called on him du- 
ring its composition, and disappeared on its com- 
pletion. The requiem was soon chanted over Ms 
oivn grave ; and the man in black was, I believe, 
but a phantom of his own creation. 

A step beyond this, and we have the spectres of 
the delirium of fever : the wanderings of typhus, 
in which the victim either revels with delight in 
the regions of fancy, a midsummer madness, or is 
influenced by gloom and despair, in which, with a 
consciousness of right and wrong, he is driven head- 
long to acts of ruin and devastation. 

Ida. In this illusive condition of the intellect con- 
sists even the monomania of suicide, and the phre- 
nologist will declare that torpor or excitement of 
the " organ of the love of life" will incite or deter 
from such an act. But surely this is error ; it is 
certain that there was a fashion among the Stoics 
for this crime ; and even in the early history of 
Marseilles, suicide was sanctioned, not only by cus- 
tom, but by authority. 

Ev. It is a truth of history, but the essence of the 
crime is the predisposition in the brain. You will 
think to confute my position, Astrophel, by addu- 
cing Brutus and Cassius, and Antony and Cato, and 
a host of Roman heroes, in proof of the sanity of 
these suicides ; but even in the case of Cato, if we 
read Plutarch, and not Addison, who, with Rous- 
seau, Montaigne, and Shaftesbury, leaned towards 
a sanction, we shall believe that Cato was a mono- 
maniac. I speak this in charity. 



88 FANTASY FROM OPIUM. 

And to all these morbid states we may still offer 
analogies. Such are the effects of opium. 

The brilliancy of thought may be artificially in- 
duced, also, by various other narcotics, such as the 
juice of the American manioc, the fumes of tobacco, 
or the yupa of the Othomacoes on the Orinoco. To 
this end we learn from a learned lord, that even 
ladies of quality are wont to " light up their minds 
with opium, as they do their houses with wax or 
oil." 

Indeed, a kind of inspiration seems for a time to 
follow the use of these narcotics. The Cumean 
sibyl swallowed the juice of the cherry laurel ere 
she sat on the divining tripod ; and from this may 
have arisen those superstitious fancies of the an- 
cients regarding the virtues of the laurel, and the 
influence of other trees, of which I remember an 
allusion of the excellent author of the " Sylva." 

" Here we may not omit what learned men have 
observed concerning the custom of prophets and 
persons inspired of old to sleep upon the boughs 
and branches of trees, on mattresses and beds made 
of leaves, ad consulendum, to ask advice of God. 
Naturalists tell us that the Laurus and Agnus Cas- 
tus were trees which greatly composed thephrensy, 
and did facilitate true vision, and that the first was 
specifically efficacious, npog rove evdvaiao/iovc, to 
inspire a poetical fury; and Cardan, I remember, in 
his book de Fato, insists very much on the dreams 
of trees for portents and presages, and that the use 
of some of them do dispose men to visions." 

During the revery of the opium-eater (not the 
deep sleep of a full dose, but the first and second 
stage ere coma be induced), he is indeed a poet, 
so far as brilliant imagination is concerned, but his 
scribbling is mere " midsummer madness," the 
phantoms of which are as wild as those of intoxica- 



FANTASY FROM OPIUM. 89 

tion, dreaming, or insanity. But the philosophy, 
the metaphysics of poetry, are not the product of 
mere excitement: " Poeta nascitur, non fit." A 
poet's genius is born with him. The influence of 
opium on the philosopher or the orator is the same, 
but in them it does not usually elevate the force of 
imagination beyond that of judgment. The pow- 
er of the faculties has been, in fact, exhausted by 
thought or study ; the stimulus of opium, then, re- 
stores that depressed energy to its proper level, 
leaving the judgment perfect, and not overbalanced. 
The celebrated Thomas Brown, during the compo- 
sition of his Essay on the Mind, kept his intellect 
on the stretch by opium for several successive 
nights. Sir James Mackintosh (one of his favourite 
pupils) informed us that, on entering the doctor's 
library one morning somewhat abruptly, he over- 
heard the following command addressed to his 
daughter : " Effie, bring me the moderate stimulus 
of a hundred drops of laudanum." So that the ex- 
citement be obtained, it matters not how, whether 
by the use of opium, or other " drowsy sirups of 
the East, poppy or mandragora," as in the case of 
some of our modern statesmen ; or the free libation 
of brandy in certain orators, who were wont to stag- 
ger down to the House from White's or Brookes's, 
with those clubhouse laurels, wet towels, round 
their brows, and overwhelm St. Stephen's by the 
thunders of their eloquence ; unless, indeed, this 
be earned to excess, and then we have two very 
interesting states of vision, as you may gather from 
the following witticism on two of these departed 
legislators, which was founded on a truth : 

" I cannot see the speaker, Bill, can you? 
Not see him, Harry — d e, I see two !" 

for the effects of alcohol and opium are alike : the 

first degree is excitement ; the second, re very ; the 

H 2 



90 FANTASY FROM OPIUM. 

third, sleep or stupor. " Ben Jonson," writes 
Aubrey, " would many times exceede in drink ; 
Canarie was his beloved liquor; then he would 
tumble home to bed, and when he had thoroughly 
perspired, then to studie." 

The second visions of that moral delinquent, the 
practised opium-eater, like the cordial julep of Co- 
mus, 

" Will bathe the drooping spirits in delignt, 
Beyond the bliss of dreams." 

The phantoms of the third stage are often of un- 
utterable anguish : visions of bright forms dabbled 
in blood, and scenes of crime and horror which are 
at once loathed and revelled in. The awful curse 
of Lord Byron's infidel — a vampyre — who, haunt- 
ing the graveyard with gouls and afrits, sucks the 
blood of his race : 

" 'Till they with horror shrink away 
From spectre more accursed than they." 

Thus, for a moment of delirious joy, he yields up 
his mind to the agonies of remorse, his body to a 
slow poison, perhaps to a sinful dissolution. 

Ida. The scenes which I gazed on among the 
opium-houses of Constantinople ever excited my 
wonder and my pity. These slaves of pleasure, 
when they assemble and take their seats, are the 
perfect pictures of either apathetic melancholy or 
despair. As the potent poison creeps through the 
blood, they are lighted with unholy fires, until, these 
being exhausted, the vulture of Prometheus again 
gnaws their vitals, although the fire is not stolen 
from heaven. 

Listen to the confessions of such a slave : 
" At last, with the sense that all was lost, female 
forms, and the features that were all the world to 
me, and clasped hands, and heart-breaking part- 



FANTASY FROM OPIUM. 91 

ings, and then everlasting farewells, and with a 
sigh such as the caves of hell sighed, when the 
incestuous mother uttered the abhorred name of 
Death, the sound was reverberated — Everlasting 
farewells." 

" Whatsoever things capable of being visually 
represented I did but think of in the darkness, im- 
mediately shaped themselves into phantoms of the 
eye ; and by a process no less inevitable, when 
thus once traced in faint and visionary colours, they 
were drawn out by the fierce chemistry of my 
dreams with insufferable splendour that fretted my 
heart." 

Is there any earthly pleasure which will com? 
pensate the victim of this voluntary' condemnation] 

Ev. And yet a visionary once thought of renting 
the Hummums in Covent Garden, and purchasing 
a large stock of opium, for the purpose of supply- 
ing us with visions. He would have succeeded, 
perhaps, if he had hired a second Helen to serve 
up this nepenthe to the guests. 

The intense effect of opium is insensibility or 
death. Thus, the Natchez give narcotics to their 
victims, and the Brahmins to the suttee women, ere 
they ascend the pile, for the purpose of producing 
insensibility. Its mildest effects will be, if long 
continued, especially in early life, idiocy ; and Op- 
penheim states that it is sometimes administered 
to adults by design, to substantiate a statute of lu- 
nacy. 

Astr. I cannot disprove your facts, Evelyn, nor 
do they yet disprove the rationality of my own faith. 
And is there not one illusion from opium-eating 
which seems to reverse your laws 1 From the tales 
of the Opium-eater we learn, that the healthy 
thoughts of the mind seem to be frozen up in the 
brain, like the notes in the frozen horn of Munchau- 



92 FANTASY FROM OPIUM. 

sen, or the Irish echo, which was so long in giving 
its answers, that if you had a concert, you should 
play and sing the airs the day before the assemblage 
of your company. And then, when the effect was 
wearing off, these thoughts followed so copiously 
and fast as that not one in a hundred could be re- 
corded. Is this true 1 

Ev. It is a slight fact embellished. The action 
of opium, however, is not uniform : it may produce 
deep sleep, or insensible stupor; or it may quiet 
some of the faculties ; and when it does so, it ex- 
cites a dream of irregular associations. 

The salts of morphia exert an especial influence 
over the organ of language, so that the orator, in 
the fluency of his power of speech, finds it diffi- 
cult to stop. The muriate is the best preparation 
to induce fluency and confidence in speaking, or 
the mind to luxuriate throughout a night in de- 
lightful revery ; and in the morning, after this fan- 
tasy, the body will even rise refreshed. 

In some cases, however, morphia will create a 
very strange illusion, a spectral language ; so that, 
in reading or listening, we may feel or think that 
the words have lost their true meaning. This ef- 
fect is, I am told, attended with severe headache. 

The poem of " Kubla Khan," which Coleridge 
has termed a psychological curiosity, had its origin 
in the excitement of opium, a spinning out of a 
theme in " Purchas's Pilgrim," which he had been 
reading : it is an effort of the poet in recording the 
wild images which had been before presented to 
the mind's eye of the enthusiast — the impression, 
indeed, of the pleasures and the pains of memory. 



POETIC FANTASY, OR PHRENSY. 93 



POETIC FANTASY, OR PHRENSY. 

" The poet's eye, in a fine phrensy rolling, 
Doth glance from heaven to earth — from earth to heaven. 
And as imagination bodies forth 
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen 
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothings 
A local habitation and a name." — Midsummer Night's Dream. 

Astr. Is there so potent a charm in poppies, 
Evelyn] You will make us believe, soon, that 
opium can make a Shakspeare — that genius can be 
imparted by a drug. 

The ghosts of fairy land, those bright emana- 
tions of a poet's fancy, which are wafted through 
the air on the thistle-down, or swing to and fro on 
the filmy thread of the gossamer, sprang from a 
deeper source than this. The fairy mythology of 
Shakspeare, the beautiful creations of the " Tem- 
pest" and the "Midsummer Night's Dream," are 
the very offspring of that innate genius that ** ex- 
hausted worlds, and then imagined new" 

Those exquisite and tricksy spirits, the mis- 
chievous Puck and the delicate Ariel — indeed, the 
whole train of ghosts which appeared to Macbeth, 
and Richard, and Clarence, and Brutus, and Ham- 
let, and the spirits of the " Midsummer Night," 
the " Tempest," and " Macbeth," of Bolingbroke 
and Joan of Arc, could not have been so painted, 
unless they had stood before the mind of Shaks- 
peare as palpable as reality. 

Look, too, on those splendid illustrations of the 
G-othic poets by the eccentric, or, as Evelyn would 
call him, the half-mad Fuseli. Look on the wild 
pencillings of Blake, another poet-painter, and you 
will be assured that they were ghost-seers. An 
intimate friend of Blake, himself a reader of the 
stars, has told .me the strangest tales of his visions. 
In one of his reveries he witnessed the whole cer- 



94 POETIC FANTASY, OR PHRENSY. 

emony of a fairy's funeral, which he peopled with 
mourners and mutes, and described with high po- 
etic beauty. He was engaged, in one of these 
moods, in painting King Edward L, who was sit- 
ting to him for his picture. While they were con- 
versing, Wallace suddenly presented himself on 
the field, and, by this uncourteous intrusion, marred 
the studies of the painter for that day. 

Ev. A most unhappy comparison, Astrophel. 
The difference between Shakspeare and Blake is 
antipodean. Blake was a visionary, and thought 
his fancies real : he was mad. Shakspeare was a 
philosopher, and knew all his fancy was but imagi- 
nation, however real might be the facts he wrought 
from. Ben Jonson told Drummond that he lay 
awake one whole night, gazing in mute admira- 
tion on his great toe, surrounding which, in minia- 
ture, appeared the inhabitants of Rome, and Car- 
thage, and Tartary, and Turkey ; but he, also, was 
aware of the illusion. 

Cast. My most gracious smile is yours, Evelyn, 
for this honour to my sweet Shakspeare. I pray 
you accord the same to the spectral visions of a 
poet, in whose beautiful Aminta each line is a 
breath of inspiration— the day-dreams of the ele- 
gant Tasso. Listen : 

" At Bisaccio, Manso had an opportunity to ex- 
amine the singular effects of Tasso's melancholy, 
and often disputed with him concerning a familiar 
spirit which he pretended to converse with. Manso 
endeavoured in vain to persuade his friend that 
the whole was the illusion of a disturbed imagina- 
tion ; but the latter was strenuous in maintaining 
the reality of what he asserted, and, to convince 
Manso, desired him to be present at one of these 
mysterious conversations. Manso had the com- 
plaisance to meet him the next day, and while 



POETIC FANTASY, OR PHRENSY. 95 

they were engaged in discourse, on a sudden he 
observed that Tasso kept his eyes fixed upon a 
window, and remained in a manner immovable ; 
he called him by his name several times, but re- 
ceived no answer. At last Tasso cried out, ' There 
is the friendly spirit who Is come to converse with 
me : look, and you will be convinced of the truth 
of all that I have said.' Manso heard him with 
surprise. He looked, but saw nothing except the 
sunbeams darting through the window ; he cast 
his eyes all over the room, but could perceive 
nothing, and was just going to ask where the pre- 
tended spirit was, when he heard Tasso speak 
with great earnestness, sometimes putting ques- 
tions to the spirit, snd sometimes giving answers, 
delivering the whole in such a pleasing manner, 
and with such elevated expressions, that he listen- 
ed with admiration, and had not the least inclina- 
tion to interrupt him. At last this uncommon con- 
versation ended with the departure of the spirit, 
as appeared by Tasso's words, who, turning to- 
wards Manso, asked him if his doubts were re- 
moved. Manso was more amazed than ever ; he 
scarce knew what to think of his friend's situation, 
and waved any farther conversation on the subject." 
Ev. I shall forfeit your smile, sweet Castaly, or 
change it, alas ! for a frown. I have ever thought 
Tasso a monomaniac, for he yielded to his illusion. 
I can give you, in a fragment from Lorry, the 
counterpart of Tasso's fantasy in a far different 
mind. " During these paroxysms she would talk, 
and was accustomed to address herself to some 
one individual present, with whom she conversed 
at first in an obscure voice, but afterward in a dis- 
tinct and audible manner. She evidently per- 
ceived him, and observed all his gestures ; but all 
Bhe said to him bore a reference to one idea, on 



96 POETIC FANTASY, OR PHRENSY. 

which she was intent. In the mean time she ap 
peared not to see or hear any other person, even 
if he exerted his voice to the utmost to make him- 
self heard. This fact I witnessed with the great- 
est astonishment, but many other persons are liv- 
ing who can attest it. The mother of this female 
died unexpectedly, after which the daughter used 
to hold conversations with her as if she was pres- 
ent. She would answer questions as if interroga- 
ted by her mother ; would entreat her to take care 
of her health, and recommend some physician as 
more able to restore her than others. Moreover, 
she would talk to her mother of her destined mar- 
riage, although it had already been some time com- 
pleted, in a manner perfectly like that of a sane 
and modest young woman, making some objections 
to it, and replying to others, and appeared to be 
revealing all her secret wishes ; in a word, she 
seemed perfectly collected and rational, excepting 
the error respecting time and the supposed pres- 
ence of her mother. This woman had in other 
respects good health, but was afraid of the small- 
est noise, and was easily affected by anything she 
saw or heard. At length she fell into a consump- 
tion." 

In other cases, especially in accomplished minds, 
the fantasy is usually combined with derangement 
of health. A very ingenuous and elegant young 
lady, about the age of seventeen, was suddenly 
seized with catalepsy. It commenced with violent 
convulsions of almost every muscle of her body, 
and the most distressing hiccoughs. In about an 
hour came on a fixed spasm, one hand being placed 
against her head, and the other to support it. In 
about half an hour more the spasm subsided, and 
then began the revery in a moment, her eyes and 
expression indicating a fixed attention. She then 



POETIC FANTASY, OR PHRENSY. 97 

conversed with imaginary persons, her eyes being 
wide open, and during this ecstasy she was com- 
pletely insensible to the most irritating, and, in- 
deed, the most violent stimuli. 

Sir Henry Halford related to us that, on a visit 
to a person of exalted rank in his chamber, he 
heard him, with great energy, request Garrick to 
play a scene in " Hamlet," reminding him of the 
lines in Horace's Epistles : 

" Haud ignobilis Argis, 
Qui se oredebat miros audire tragoedos, 
In vacuo igetus sessor plausorque theatre" 

In Dr. Darwin, too, we read of an epileptic girl, 
who, during a fit of re very, when insensible to all 
external stimuli, conversed fluently with imaginary 
people, and was surprised to hear of her illusions 
when fully awake. 

And in Andral, of a gentleman of distinguished 
ability, who believed that an absent friend was 
sitting among his guests, welcoming him to his ta- 
ble, and, with great courtesy, handing him a chair. 
You remember how pathetically Crabbe has illus- 
trated this illusion in his poem of " Sir Eustace 
Gray." 

Cast. Hark to the profane philosopher who as- 
sociates poetry with madness ! Tell me, Master 
Evelyn, while you wandered in the Water walks 
of Magdalene, with the balmy breezes of heaven 
around your brow, and the mellow sunbeam stream- 
ing through the green leaves upon your cheek, with 
the inspired volumes of Virgil, and Theocritus, and 
Bion, and Moschus breathing nature in all the 
lines of their beautiful idyls — while Astrophel, per- 
chance, was mushier among cobwebs in Friar Ba- 
con's study- — tell me, felt you not the sublimity 
and truth of poesy % You remind me of the quaint 
tradition among the shepherds of Snowdonia, that 
7 I 



98 POETIC FANTASY, OR PHRENSY. 

if two persons lie down, on Midsummer eve, to 
sleep upon a certain rock on Snowdon, one will 
wake a poet, the other a maniac. I pr'ythee, think 
otherwise of Tasso, whose reveries were an ecstasy 
of bright thoughts. Even when the light of day 
is eclipsed, as when the senseless orbs of Homer 
and Milton were merged in " ever-during dark," 
the thoughts of a poet may be deeper and clearer 
for the gloom. 

Ida. And so pure and holy withal. In the " De- 
fensio Secunda," I remember this gem of senti- 
ments : " Involved in darkness, not so much from 
the imperfection of our optic powers as from the 
shadow of the Creator's wings — a darkness which 
he frequently irradiates with an inner and far su- 
perior light." 

Never did poet feel more intensely than Milton 
the truth of that divine thought, that " the shadow 
of God is light." 

Cast. And call up that glory of the Elizabethan 
age, Philip Sidney, whose life, in the words of 
Campbell, was " a poetry in action," and who 
more than imbodied the brightest pictures of Tasso 
and Ariosto, and eclipsed the glory of that Cheva- 
lier Bayard, like himself, "sans peur et sans re- 
proche." 

Ev. I cry you mercy, fairest ladies, I speak not 
of the light of poetry, but of its shadows. Chcro- 
mania is the first form of ?nonomania, or the mad- 
ness of one idea; and this is marked by cheerful- 
ness and splendid ideas, which, indeed, often tend 
to mitigate the melancholy scenes of derangement, 
as if " the light that led astray was light from 
heaven." I will illustrate this by repeating to you 
the letter to his brother of a young officer, whose 
progressive changes of mind, from excitement to 
confirmed mania, it was my duty to watch over. 



POETIC FANTASY, OR PHRENSY. 99 

" December 4th, 1832. 

" To , Esq. 

" I am Lord President of the Counsil, a most 
honorable situation, and the richest gift of the 
Crown, which brings me in seven thousand pounds 
every year. The Counsil consists of Three Secre- 
taries of State, of which I am one, and the Pay- 
master of the Forces. When the King William 
the forth shall die, then shall be crowned King of 
England, and be crowned in Westermister Abbey, 
By The Lord Archbishop of Canterbury. I shall, 
on the occasion of my coronation, have placed in 
the different street of London one thousand pipes 
of wine for my people, and at night in the of Hyde 
the Park a magnificent display of Fireworks, and 
one hundred pieces of Artillery shall fire three 
rounds for the amusement, of my people and sub- 
jects. I have only now to give you a list of my 
titles and honors : 

" King of England. 
First Heir Presumptive to the Crown. 
Major-general and Field-martial. 
Duke of Leitzep. 
Prince of Denmark. 
Lord -president of the Counsil. 
Knight Banneret. 
Lord-treasurer of the Exchequer. 

Lieutenant-colonel , Lord and Baronet. 

Aid-de-Camp to the King. 
Champion of England. 

" Dear , I wish to acquaint you that Wind- 
sor Castle belongs to me, that the palace of Brigh- 
ton also belongs to me, also I purchased from the 
Duke of Wellington the splendid park and Palace 
of Stratfieldsea, wherein there are very extensive 
Forests of Oak and of Pine trees, together with a 



100 POETIC FANTASY, OR PHRENSY. 

magnificent sheet of Water containing Ells and 
Salmon Trout. 

" Dear , I have to beg that you give my 

love and duty to your wife — and give this letter to 
read, I pray you, according to my desire and wish." 

I may tell you that the very onset of phrensy is 
often but an elevated spirit of poesy, in which 
brilliancy and judgment shall be companions ; but, 
like iEsop's bow, the mind shall be warped and 
wrung by being constantly bent on its subject ; 
and thus the source of brilliancy and wit may be 
the source of madness. A change of subject will \ 
often do much to unbend such a mind, as a change I 
of posture will relieve muscular fatigue, or as a i 
sudden impression of fear or fright has thwarted \ 
a suicide on the moment of his self-attempt. In- 
deed mania will often appear to induce an almost 
inspired talent, which, I may hint to you, may be ex- 
plained by the oxygenizing of the blood in the brain. 

In Van Swieten, we read of a working female 
who, during fits of insanity, displayed the faculty 
of rhyming, or poetic talent ; and (as I am fond of 
analogy) in Pinel, of one who, during his insane 
moments, argued (as if from concentrated memory) 
in an acute and intelligent manner on the events 
of the Revolution. 

Then Haller tells us of an idiot who was wound- 
ed on the head, and, during its healing, the intel- 
lect became lucid (and this on the principle of a 
counteraction) ; but, on the healing being com- 
pleted, again the creature was an idiot. 

When we are roaming over the flowery fields 
of poesy, we are seldom inclined to reflect on the 
mental labour by which they are embellished. We 
may satpj^ose that whatever is born of the brain is 
ushered inby an easy birth ; but poesy is often at- 



POETIC FANTASY, OR PHRENSY. 101 

tended by a pang of parturition, and one single line 
may rankle in the brain for hours ere it struggle 
into light, and perhaps require a frontal blow as 
violent as that which cleft the scull of Jupiter and 
gave birth to Pallas. 

There are some minds which can support the 
effort of composition with impunity ; but when we 
recollect the diseases which are entailed on genius, 
the melancholy of Cowper, and the distraction of 
the amiable Collins, who 

" Passed in madd'ning pain life's feverish dream, 
While rays of genius only served to show 
The thick 'ning horror, and exalt his wo ;" 

when we remember the gloomy setting of the brill- 
iant sun of Scott, during the period of his apoplec- 
tic tendency, when his letter " filled the minds of 
his publishers with dismay," and he sunk into the 
delusive hope that his debts were liquidated to the 
full ; when we are told that Ariosto was never seen 
to laugh, and rarely to smile ; that Rousseau was 
ever restless, and on the verge of mania ; when 
we reflect on the premature decay of unhappy 
White— 

" When science self-destroyed her fav'rite son ;" 

on the painful conflicts of Byron, when his dark 
hour was on him ; on Chatterton, " the sleepless 
boy who perished in his pride ;" we are incited, 
almost unconsciously, to echo the apostrophe of 
Wordsworth : 

" We poets in our youth begin in gladness, 
But thereof comes in the end despondency and madness." 

Ida. The laurel, then, contains more poison than 
that of prussic acid in its leaf. The perils of ro- 
mance are not ever in these extremes ; yet the 
mere indulgence of poetic thoughts may so raise 
the beau ideal of beauty in the sensitive and youth- 
I 2 



102 POETIC FANTASY, OR PHRENSY. 

fal mind as to unfit it for the common duties of life. 
Like Narcissus, the heart perishes for love of its 
own shadow. It becomes so acutely sensitive as 
to " die of a rose in aromatic pain ;" or like the 
Sybarite, it cannot sleep, because a crumpled rose- 
leaf lay beneath the pillow. 

/ I have often thought that the secret of happiness 
may lie in this precept : " Take the good of life as 
it is, a divine gift, and not an agreeable deception;" 
when evil is in your path, search its cause, analyze 
its nature, and if you discover not that you have 
yourself to thank for it, at least you may prove that 
the evil itself is made up of mere trifles, and thus 
you will learn to be resigned. 

And with the beauty and treasures of earth — if 
you possess them, enjoy them with a prudent and 
a grateful heart. If they belong to others, sigh not 
— pine not for them, but analyze them also, and 
you may find that the hope of their enjoyment was 
a phantom; for aggregated beauties are often made 
up of deformed or unlovely atoms. 

I might illustrate my remarks by relating to you 
an episode of the life of my young friend Stanmore ; 
from which I learned, with sorrow, that the heart 
may droop beneath its own excess of sensibility (a 
mystery to those who were strangers to its secret), 
and that the bosom of love may be self-blighted : 

His existence was a withered hope, that, like 
the icicle in the cup of the early flower, freezes 
the life-spring in which it is so deeply imbosomed. 
In his mind was lighted a vision of Elysium, beyond 
what earth, with all its virtue and beauty, could give 
him : a spectral Utopia. His life was a blank. 
He found not happiness, because he knew not con- 
tentment. He was the leader of many a forlorn 
hope in Spain, and fell in a midnight enterprise 
among the guerillas in the Sierra Morena. 



POETIC FANTASY, OR PHRENSY. 103 

Ev. And had the sword spared him, he would 
have died a moral suicide. 

What folly, thus to chase a butterfly, instead of 
yielding to the virtuous influence of woman, which 
beyond aught else softens and ennobles man's heart, 
entrancing it in floods of human passion, which, 
with all its pains, yields happiness a thousand fold 
more than the maudlin sentiments of Rousseau, 
that, reducing love to a mere phantom, leave the 
lone heart to prey on its own sensibility. 

Such was the romantic poet of Endymion, who 
for the phantom of his waking dreams gave up 
the study of that science which might have nursed 
and fortified a mind so soon chilled to death by the 
icy fingers of criticism. Erato was the mistress of 
John Keats ; but while he wooed, he perished : like 
the Rosicrucian, who, to save the life of his lady, 
took the oath of celibacy, and thus lost her love 
forever. Even in the lecture-room of Saint Thom- 
as's I have seen Keats in a deep poetic dream : 
his mind was on Parnassus with the Muses. And 
here is a quaint fragment which he one evening 
scribbled in our presence, while the precepts of 
Sir Astley Cooper fell unheeded on his ear : 

" Whenne Alexandre the Conqueroure was way- 
fayringe in y e londe of Inde, there mette hym a 
damoselle of marveillouse beautie slepynge uponne 
the herbys and flourys. He colde ne loke uponne 
her withouten grete plesance, and he was welle 
nighe loste in wondrement. Her forme was ev- 
ery jhe whytte lyke y e fayrest carvynge of Quene 
Cy there, onlie thatte y 1 was s welly d and blushyd 
wyth warmthe and lyffe wythalle. 

" Her forhed was as whytte as ys the snow 
whyche y e talle hed of a Norwegian pyne stelythe 
from y e northerne wynde. One of her fayre hondes 
was yplaced thereonne, and thus whytte wyth 



104 FANTASY FROM SYMPATHY WITH THE BRAIN. 

whytte was ymyngld as y e gode Arthure saythe, 
lyke whytest lylys yspredde on whyttest snowe ; 
and her bryghte eyne whenne she them oped, 
sparklyd lyke Hesperus through an evenynge 
cloude. 

" Theye were yclosed yn slepe, save that two 
slauntynge raies shotte to her mouthe, and were 
theyre bathyd yn swetenesse, as whenne bye 
chaunce y e moone f\ndeth abanke of violettes and 
droppethe thereonne y e sylverie dewe. 

" The authoure was goynge onne withouthen de- 
scrybynge y e ladye's breste, whenne lo, a genyus 
appearyd — ' Cuthberte,' sayeth he, ' an thou canst 
not descrybe y e ladye's breste, and fynde a simile 
thereunto, I forbyde thee to proceede yn thy ro- 
maunt.' Thys, I kennd fulle welle, far surpassyd 
my feble powres, and forthwythe I was fayne to 
droppe my quille." 



FANTASY FROM SYMPATHY WITH 
THE BRAIN. 

" My eyes are made the fools o' the other senses." — Macbeth 

Astr. I marvel not, lady, that those pencilled 
brows do frown upon the ruthless scholar who 
thus dares to dismantle the fair realm of poesy, 
and bind the poppy, and the cypress, and the dead- 
ly nightshade with the myrtle and the laurel. 

We shall have, ere long, a statute of lunacy 
against the poet and the seer ; : or, hapless, he will 
imprison thee, fair creature, within a cloven pine ; 
and, like Prospero, I must break my wand and 
bury it certain fathoms in the earth, and, deeper 
than ever plummet sounded, drown my books. The 
pages of Ptolemy, and Haly, and Agrippa, and 
Lily will be but by-gone fables, and the meta- 



FANTASY FROM SYMPATHY WITH THE BRAIN. 105 

physics of the mighty mind will be controverted by 
the slicing of the brain and marrow with the knife 
of these anatomists. Nay, we must devoutly be- 
lieve what they so learnedly give out, that frontal 
headaches in the locality of form, colour, and mem- 
ber, and, forsooth, in the organ of wonder too, often 
accompany spectral illusions, and that white or 
gray ghosts result from excited form and deficient 
colour ! ! 

Martin Luther, who was a believer in special in- 
fluence, quarrelled with the physician who referred 
its mystic signs to natural causes. I am not so un- 
courteous, yet express my wonder, Evelyn, at the 
confidence with which you presume to the discov- 
ery of a material reason and a cause for all the 
phenomena of our mysterious intellect. 

Ev. And why should I not, dear Astrophel, if I 
search for and discover it in the studies of that 
sublime science, the meditation on which inspired 
Galen with this pious sentiment : " Compono hie 
profecto canticum in Creatoris nostri laudem." 

Is it more profane to think that the Deity should 
speak to us through the medium of our senses than 
by the agency of a spirit 1 Recollect, I have pre- 
sumed neither to enter deeply into metaphysical 
reasoning, nor to describe minutely the condition 
of the brain ; and I have alluded but slightly to the 
supposed function of its varied structures. Lord 
Bacon has observed, " He who would philosophize 
in a due and proper manner must dissect nature, 
but not abstract her, as they are obliged to do who 
will not dissect her." Dissection, however, in its 
anatomical sense, has not, perhaps cannot, elucidate 
the coincidence of symptom and pathology in cases 
which so seldom prove fatal, and the causes of 
which may be so evanescent. Still, it is only by a 
combination of metaphysical argument and ana- 



106 FANTASY FROM SYMPATHY WITH THE BRAIN. 

tomical research, with the essential aid of analogy, 
that the phenomena and disease of mind can be 
fairly investigated. 

In the important question of insanity, there is an 
error among the mere metaphysicians that is fraught 
with extreme danger — the abstract notion of moral 
causes being the chief excitement of mania. This 
error has led to that melancholy abuse of the coer- 
cive treatment and excitement of fear in a maniac, 
as if a savage keeper possessed the wondrous power 
of frightening him into his wits. ) Hear what the 
magniloquent Reil writes on this point : " The re- 
ception of a lunatic should be amid the thunder of 
cannon ; he should be introduced by night over a 
drawbridge, be laid hold of by Moors, thrust into 
a subterranean dungeon, and put into a bath with 
eels and other beasts !" 

And Lichtenberg, another moral philanthropist, 
sanctioned by the divine axiom, " the rod helps 
God," urges the employment of coercion and cruel- 
ty for this sublime psychological reason : that under 
the infliction of the lash and the cane " the soul is 
forced to knit itself once more to that world from 
which the cudgels come !" Think ye that these 
moralists, if not hoodwinked by false metaphysics, 
would have so closely copied the malevolence of 
an inquisitor or a devil % 

W*e must believe that each illusive representa- 
tion is marked by some change in some certain por- 
tion of the brain, the function of which bears a 
reference to the subject or nature of the illusion ; 
it may be so minute as not to be recognised by our 
vision. Indeed, if the bodily sensations of every 
human passion be faithfully analyzed, it will be 
proved that there is an unusual feeling in some 
part, when even a thought passes through the mind, 
under these definitions : a thrill, a creeping, a glow, 



FANTASY FROM SYMPATHY WITH THE BRAIN. 107 

a flush, a chill, a tremor — nay, even fainting, con- 
vulsion, death. 

Now the brain feels, and thinks, and wills ; but 
the blood is also essential to these faculties. If 
part of the brain is changed, or its circulation de- 
ranged, in that instant an effect unlike health is pro- 
duced : and such is the illusion of the ghost-seer. 
Or if the substance of the organ of sense, as the 
eye, be altered, its function is deranged, and an 
illusive spectrum appears to float before it. Nay, 
we are assured by Tiedeman and Gall (opinions 
of high value) that they have known patients who 
(smile as you please) were mad only on one side of 
the brain, and perceived their madness with the 
other ; and /may assure you, too, that there have 
been persons who really thought with half the 
brain only. 

I will again claim the courtesy of these fair 
dames while I offer another glimpse of the dull, 
cold region of physiology. 

Recollect the illustrations I have adduced in al- 
lusion to those classes, on whose privacy the ghost 
has the privilege of intrusion. I will now offer illus- 
trations of those remote influences which work these 
seeming mysteries in the sensitive or diseased brain. 

A patient of Dr. Gregory, at the hour of six, one 
hour after dinner, was daily visited by a hag, or in- 
cubus, which confronted him, and appeared to 
strike him with a crutch. Immediately on this he 
would fall from his chair in a swoon. This gentle- 
man was relieved by bleeding and abstinence. 

The Abbe Pilori, in Florence, invariably saw 
the phantom of scorpions around him after he had 
partaken of luncheon. 

There was a gentleman in Edinburgh, learned in 
fourteen languages, of the age of seventy-six. In 
1819 he began to see strange faces, in old dresses, 



108 FANTASY FROM SYMPATHY WITH THE BRAIN. 

like paintings, and his own face changing from 
young to old ; and these phantoms came at his call. 
Wine-drinking increased especially these spectres 
during the twelve years that the illusion continued, 
yet his mental faculties were not much impaired. 
When eighty years old, he came to London to dine 
with the Knights of the Bath, and went back at 
the rate of a hundred miles a day. His language 
latterly was a patois of fourteen. One night he 
saw his dead wife's shadow, and jumped after her 
out of the window, and ran after her through the 
conservatory; yet he remembered when told that 
his wife was dead, and was then quiet. Disordered 
digestion aggravated his case extremely. Mr. 
Cragg's opinion was, that " his thinking was cor- 
rect, but the expression of thought wrong." On ex- 
amination, the dura mater was found adherent to 
the scull ; in parts there was a thick effusion and 
vascularity over the brain, and the carotids were 
partially ossified. 

In a mind excited or exhausted, the natural 
sympathy between the brain and the stomach is 
wrought up to an extreme ; and in the two most 
interesting cases of spectral illusion on record, this 
instance is beautifully illustrated. The bookseller 
of Berlin, Nicolai (whose phantasms are, become 
so hackneyed a tale in the records of Psychology), 
had been thus mentally excited. It were long to 
repeat the circumstantial and scientific detail of 
his waking visions ; of his ghosts of departed friends 
and of strangers to him, and of the groups of shad- 
owy figures which glided through his chamber at 
these spectral levees ; and how his philosophic 
mind distinguished the intrusion of the spectre at 
the door and the real friend to whom its opening- 
gave admittance ; and how they disappeared when 
he shut his eyes, and came again as he opened his 



FANTASY FROM SYMPATHY WITH THE BRAIN. 109 

lids ; or how he was at last amused by his analy- 
sis of all these illusive spectra. But the sympathy 
to which I have alluded will be efficiently proved 
by one quotation from the Prussian's recital. Du- 
ring the time leeches were applied to his temples 
his chamber was crowded with phantoms. " This 
continued uninterruptedly till about half past four 
o'clock, when my digestion commenced. I then 
fancied that they began to move more slowly ; 
soon after their colour began to fade, and at seven 
o'clock they were entirely white ; then they seemed 
to dissolve in the air, while fragments of some of 
them continued visible a considerable time." On 
other occasions they attempted to reappear, and 
changed to white more and more faintly as his 
health improved. 

There is equal interest, both for science and cu- 
riosity, in the illusion of Mrs. A. (as told by Brew- 
ster in his "Natural Magic"), and which sprung 
from the like causes. The sympathetic sensitive- 
ness of this lady was so acute, that an expression 
of pain in another produced it in the corresponding 
part of herself. And she, too, was intruded on by 
spectres of men and women, and cats and carria- 
ges, and by corpses in shrouds peering over her 
shoulder at her toilet-glass, and ghastly likenesses 
of gentlemen in grave-clothes sitting unceremoni- 
ously in arm-chairs in her drawing-room. And 
yet the perfect restoration of the lady's health was 
coincident with her complete freedom from these 
spectral visitations. 

You will read in the Anatomie of Melancholy 
that " Eremites and anchorites have frequently such 
absurd visions and revelations, by reason of much 
fasting." In exhaustion, too, or on the approach 
of vertigo, if we shut our eyes, we seem as if turn- 
ing round ourselves ; and if we open them, then 
K 



110 FANTASY FROM SYMPATHY WITH THE BRAIN. 

this whimsical movement is referred to the chairs 
and tables in our chamber. 

These, then, are the remote sympathies with the 
organs of digestion, and this chiefly by the de- 
rangement of the circulation of the blood between 
the brain and the heart. 

In the case of an enlarged heart, Dr. Kelly dis- 
covered that a dark spectrum was perceived syn- 
chronous with the systole, or contraction of its ven- 
tricles, so that the patient could count his pulse 
merely by watching the motion of this illusive 
shade on the white ceiling of his room. 

The study of these false perceptions, which re- 
sult from derangement or disease of the eye, are 
replete with interest. You are aware that the func- 
tion of a nerve of sensation is so deranged by dis- 
ease, that, in some cases of paralysis, cold, bodies 
will appear heated. So, by analogy, is the func- 
tion of a nerve of sense deranged if its fibrillce, be 
disordered. 

We have Myopia, or short sight ; Presbyopia, or 
long sight ; Chrupsia, or coloured vision. We have 
night-blindness, or dim vision ; and day-blindness, 
or intolerance of light, as in the albino or owl. I 
had, and I have now, a second relative, whose 
vision is insensible to certain colours ; and the 
chemist Dalton, we know, could not distinguish 
blue from pink. 

In a Glasgow Medical Journal I read this state- 
ment by a patient : " No colour contrasts to me so 
forcibly with black as azure blue, and as you know 
that the shadows of all objects are composed of 
black, the forms or objects which have acquired 
more or less of this blue hue, from, being distant, 
become defined and marked by the possession of 
shadows, which are invisible to me in the high- 
coloured objects in a foreground, and which are 



FANTASY FROM SYMPATHY WITH THE BRAIN. Ill 

thus left comparatively confined and shapeless 
masses of colour." 

The eye may be curtailed of half its object. Mr. 
Abernethy and Dr. Wollaston were both often in 
this dilemma of a sense, so that only one half of a 
person or a name, on which they were looking, 
was visible to them. Mr. Abernethy, in his face- 
tious way, referring to his own name, told us he 
could see as far as the ne, but could not see a bit 
of the thy. This illusion is at once explained by 
anatomy. The optic nerve, at one point, interlaces 
some and crosses other of its fibres ; thus one nerve 
chiefly supplies one half of hoth eyes. Disease of 
nerve may thus paralyze one half of each retina, 
the other half only perceiving half the object or 
word. 

In many cases of disordered sensibility of the 
retina, it is influenced by the minute villi or vessels 
in the tunics of the eye. In the case of exhausted 
energy of this retina, usually accompanied by 
ni^ht-blindness, where there is no vision but in a 
strong light, floating specks, termed muscat volitan- 
tes, often become so numerous as to impart a notion 
of films floating in the watery humour of the eye, 
or before the cornea. It is a curious question in 
what portion of the retina the spectra of muscat vo- 
litantes are excited. They appear in or near the 
axis of vision ; but, as they do not interrupt the 
visual rays from material objects, it is possible they 
may arise on that spot considered to be destitute 
of vision with regard to external impression ; or 
they may be produced by detached parts only of 
the objects which impinge on the retina reaching 
the brain. If the integrity of certain of its fibres, 
which, by converging, form the optic nerve, be de- 
stroyed, distorted or imperfect objects will be pre- 
sented. This speck may be a musca volitans. 



112 FANTASY FROM SYMPATHY WITH THE BRAIN. 

Astr. The original impressions in all cases are, 
I presume, from without. How is the internally 
excited idea presented as a prominent image be- 
fore the eye % 

Ev. That form of disordered vision to which I 
allude, occurring so often in nervous persons, or 
resulting from close application to study, does not 
often appear to depend on a turgid condition of 
the vessels of the choroid coat or retina. It is usu- 
ally relieved more by tonics than by depletion ; and 
very strange illusions of sight will sometimes be 
produced merely by depressing medicines, espe- 
cially the preparations of antimony. Yet these 
dark specks appear to be floating before, and often 
at some distance ivithoutside the eye : therefore we 
may*believe that excited images or more perfect 
forms may also appear before the retina palpable. 
Between the first impression and its recurrence a 
long period may have passed (memory being un- 
limited), and it is sufficient that one sole idea be 
excited to produce a succession, as a spark of fire 
will ignite a train of gunpowder, or as an electric 
spark will discharge a whole battery. 

In the curious case of photopsia, or suffusio scin- 
tillans, we have a series of illusive spectra in the 
forms of " lucid points," and " yellow flames," and 
" fiery veils," and " rings of light." In some cases 
of ophthalmia, and in acute inflammation of the 
brain, the candles and other bright objects in the 
chamber will look like blood. Beguelin, as we 
read in the " Berlin Memoirs," by straining his 
eyes on a book, always saw the letters red. 

There is a story in Voltaire that the Duke of 
Florence threw the dice with a field-officer of his 
enemy. The spots on the dice seemed, to his ex- 
cited brain, like drops of blood : he instantly or- 
. dered a retreat of his army. And this is not won- 



FANTASY FROM SYMPATHY WITH THE BRAIN. 113 

derful ; it is but excited sensibility, of which many- 
analogies indeed may be artificially produced, as 
the flash of light from the pricking of the retina 
with a fine needle, and the beautiful iris which is 
formed by pressure on the globe of the eye. In 
the very interesting history of the prisoner in the 
dungeon of the Chatelet at Paris, the phosphores- 
cence of the eye was itself the source of light, in 
this instance so powerful as to enable the prisoner 
to iiscern the mice that came around him to pick 
up the crumbs, although the cell was pitchy dark 
to others. 

There are many curious illusions resulting from 
overstraining or over-excitement of the eye. 

Dr. Brewster, in the Edinburgh Journal of Sci- 
ence, vol. iii., says, " If in a fine dark night we un- 
expectedly obtain a glimpse of any object, either 
in motion or at rest, we are naturally anxious to 
ascertain what it is, and our curiosity calls forth all 
our powers of vision. Excited by a feeble illumi- 
nation, the retina is not capable of affording a per- 
manent vision of the object, and, while we are 
straining our eye to discover its nature, it will en- 
tirely disapoear, and afterward reappear and vanish 
alternately. 

A friend of Buffon had been watching the prog- 
ress of an eclipse through a very minute aper- 
ture. For three weeks after this there was a per- 
fect spectrum of the lucid spot marked on every 
object on which he fixed his eyes. 

Dr. Brewster had been making protracted ex- 
periments on some brilliant object, and for several 
hours after this, a dark spectrum, associated with 
intense pain, floated constantly before his eye. 

In the third volume of his Physiology, Dr. Bos- 
tock thus concludes the account of his own ocular 
spectra : " It appeared as if a number of objects, 
8 K2 



114 FANTASY FROM SYMPATHY WITH THE BRAIN. 

principally human faces or figures, on a small 
scale, were placed before me, and gradually re- 
moved, like a succession of medallions. They were 
all of the same size, and appeared to be all situa- 
ted at the same distance from the face. After one 
had been seen for a few minutes it became fainter, 
and then another, which was more vivid, seemed 
to be laid upon it, or substituted in its place, which 
in its turn was superseded by a new appearance." 

Coloured vision may arise from permanent de- 
fect or from acute disorder ; from some peculiar re- 
fraction of a ray of light on the lens of the eye, or 
by the optical laws of the accidental colours. 

The ray of white light consists of the three pris- 
matic or primitive colours. Now if the eye is 
fatigued by one of these colours, or it be lost, me- 
chanically or physiologically, the impression of two 
only will remain, and this accidental or comple- 
mentary colour is composed of the two remaining 
constituents of the white ray. Thus, if the eye 
has been strained on a red colour, it is insensible to 
this, but perceives the blue and the yellow, the com- 
bination of which is green. So, if we look long on 
a green spot, and then fix the eye on white paper, 
the spectrum will be of light red. A violet spot 
will become yellow ; a blue spot orange-red ; a black 
spot will entirely disappear on a white ground, for 
it has no complementary colour, but it appears 
white on a dark ground, as a white spot will change 
to black. 

By this law I may explain the impression made 
by black letters on the red ground of a play-bill, 
which appeared blue. The accidental colour of 
orange-red is blue ; that of black is white. By 
looking on this, the black letter first becomes white, 
and the accidental colour of the red — blue, is trans- 
ferred to the white ground of the letters. 



FANTASY FROM SYMPATHY WITH THE BRAIN. 115 

Astr. Then, as D'Agessau recommended the 
Parliament of Paris to leave the demoniac of our 
times to the physicia n, and not the di vine, y ou would 
delegate the management of all those to whom the 
mysterious world of shadows is unfolded to the 
sapient leech with his vials and his lancet. 

Ev. Nay, I presume not to so potent a faculty. 
Many of the slight imperfections of vision are, as I 
have confessed, merely exaggerations of romantic 
ideas floating in the memory ; and this is not a novel 
notion, for Plato and other philosophers held it long 
before our time. 

Muscat volitantes are usually, though not always, 
substantial ; i. e., depending on points or Jib res in 
the axis of vision, on congestions, or varicose states 
of the vessels of the choroid or retina, or of atoms 
floating in the humours. These specks, which do 
not appear alike in the eyes of all, and the brilliant 
beams in the suffusio scintillans, so varied and so 
whimsical, might be readily moulded into human 
form by the imagination of an enthusiast or the 
feelings of the ghost-seer, who is usually morose 
and melancholy, in a state of longing for a ghost or 
a mystery. 

But when many of the more confirmed illusions 
are depending on structural disease in the mem- 
branes and humours of the eye, I am confident in 
the resources of our science to relieve, if not to re- 
move. Coleridge, indeed, has expressed his be- 
lief that by some convulsion of the eye it may see 
projected before it part of its own body, easily mag- 
nified into the whole by slight imagination. If this 
be true, the whole mystery of the Deathfetch is un- 
ravelled. 

The nerves and their ganglia are often diseased 
when we least suspect ; and calcareous and scrofu- 
lous tumours, pressing on the optic axis, in the brain, 



116 MYSTERIOUS FORMS AND SIGNS. 

or on the pneumogastric nerve above its recurrent 
branch, and disease in the bronchial glands around 
the cardiac plexus, may exist, with the very slight- 
est sensations of pain. Even in extreme disorgan- 
ization of the brain, there may be remissions of 
painless repose ; and in other cases, where pain is 
synchronous with illusion, the illusion may subside, 
although the pain remains ; an indication or proof; 
indeed, of structural cause for the fantasy. And 
this discrimination, Astrophel, of the line of dis- 
tinction between sanity and derangement is often 
of a hair's breadth ; "and the law c&n'fesses here the 
high value of pathology, seeing that, in cases of 
suicide or of idiocy, and other states which involve 
the right of sepulture, the conveyance of entailed 
estates, or personal responsibility, the judgment of 
the physician is held to be oracular. 



MYSTERIOUS FORMS AND SIGNS. 

"Fierce fiery warriors fight upon the clouds 
In ranks, and squadrons, and right form of war, 
Which drizzled blood upon the capitol : 
The noise of battle hurtled in the air." — Julius Cmsar. 

Astr. Methinks you claim too much homage 
from our courtesy to your philosophy, Evelyn. 
Can we believe that all these wondrous forms and 
shadows are but an illusion of the eye, or of the 
mind's eye % And, if I grant this truth in regard 
to the eye of one mind, can we so easily libel the 
evidence of a multitude, to whom the world of 
shadows is unlocked'? 

We are now wandering in the very land of 
omens ; and will this cold philosophy of thine pre- 
sume to draw aside the veil of mystery which hangs 
over the mountain and the cataract of yon wild 
principality ? 



MYSTERIOUS FORMS AND SIGNS. 117 

E'en now the legends of many climes crowd on 
my memory ; and, while this purple cloud is o'er 
the sun, listen, I pr'ythee, to the traditions which I 
have gathered : muse on the sequences of these 
strange appearances, and you will a.t length confess, 
with the Benedictine Calmet, " Realite des appa- 
ritions est prouvee par l'evenement des choses pre- 
dites." 

The Tan-we or Tan- wed are streams of lucid fire, 
rolling along the lands of a freeholder, who, warn- 
ed of his coming fate, immediately makes his will, 
and shortly after dies. 

Among the gloomy gorges of Preselle, in Pem- 
brokeshire, comes dancing on that blue wildfire 
the " Canwyl y Cyrph," or " Corpse-candle." As 
the shades of evening are approaching, the spectre 
of the doomed comes flitting before us, with a light- 
ed taper in its hand, and with a solemn step halts 
not until it rests on its destined grave in the church- 
yard ground. If dignities and fortune have been 
the earthly lot of this doomed mortal, then is there 
shadowed forth an awful pageantry of hearse and 
ghostly steeds, and mute mourners, all gliding away 
to the place of the tomb, and, like the phantoms of 
the Aensprecker in Holland (a funeral procession 
of no less fatality), they foretel the doom of some 
ill-fated friend. 

Among the dingles of the Bachwy, in Radnor- 
shire, amid scenery of wild and lonely beauty, a 
few rugged stones denote the site of an ancient cas- 
tle of a Welsh prince : it is the ruin of the " Black 
Rock." The opposing masses of this eternal rock, 
tapestried with deep green moss and lichen, fold in 
upon the stream directly over its matchless cataract, 
which falls abruptly from the upper to the lower 
valley into this gloomy gorge ; the sunbeam play- 
ing on the upper ledge of the waterfall, while its 



118 MYSTERIOUS FORMS AND SIGNS. 

deep basin is shrouded in Stygian darkness. Into 
this gulf it was the pleasure of the prince to hurl 
from his castle walls those whom fate had made 
his prisoners. Often since the era of these cruel- 
ties (as I learned from the oral legends of the peas- 
ants), before a death, a strange unearthly groaning 
is heard, the " Kyhirraeth," becoming fainter and 
fainter until the last gasp of the mortal whose doom 
it forebodes. 

There is the dead-bell, which the Scottish peas- 
ants believe to foretel the death of a friend ; and 
the death-cart of Lancashire, which is heard rat- 
tling along the streets like a whirlwind ; and the 
Owke Mouraske, a demon of Norway, which never 
enters a house but some one of the family dies with- 
in the year. We are assured also by the Saxon 
Cranmer, that, ere one of the electral house of 
Brandenburgh dies, a woman in white appears to 
many throughout the dominions of Prussia. 

The wild mountains that surround us are prolific 
in the " Anderyn y Corff," or "Corpse-bird," and 
the " Cwm Anion," or " Dogs of Hell," which are 
believed to be demons of death, in the shape of 
hounds, and, like the mongrel of Faust, marked by 
a train of fire. These howl forth their awful warn- 
ing, while the death-peal rings in the ears of the 
nearest kin of one about to die. 

There is the legend of the " Ellyllon," a proto- 
type of the Scotch and Irish " Banshie," which ap- 
pears as an old crone, with streaming hair and a 
coat of blue, with her boding scream of death. 
The " Gwrach y Rhibyn," or " Hag of the Drib- 
ble," whose pastime is to carry stones in her apron 
across the mountains, and then to loosen her apron- 
string, and by the shower of stones to make a " drib- 
ble." This hag, at twilight, flaps her raven wing 
against the chamber window of a doomed creature, 
and with a howl, cries out, "A a a ui ui Anni." 



MYSTERIOUS FORMS AND SIGNS. 119 

In the wilderness of Zin, which stretches between 
Palestine and the Red Sea, both the Bedouin Arab 
and the traveller are greeted by the sound of matin 
bells, like the convent peal which calls the nuns tc 
their devotion ; and this, according to tradition, has 
been heard ever since the Crusades. 

Then there is a fatal spirit of the desert, which, 
like an ignis fatuus, lures men to destruction by 

" Airy tongues that syllable men's names." 
The Venetian traveller, Marco Polo, writes of those 
who, wandering unwarily from the track of the 
caravans in Tartary, hear the phantom voice of 
some dear friend (who, indeed, sometimes appears 
in person), which entices them from the route, and 
they perish in the desert. 

And Lord Lindsay, in his travels through Egypt 
and the denies of Edom, tells us one circumstantial 
story from Vincent de Blanc, of a man decoyed 
away from the caravan of an Arabian merchant by 
the entreaties of a phantom voice. 

Before an heir of Clifton of Clifton sleeps in 
death, a sturgeon is always, it is affirmed, taken in 
the river Trent. This incident, like many others, 
becomes important from its consequence. 

The park of Chartley is a wild and romantic spot, 
in its primitive state, untouched by the hand of the 
agriculturist, and was formerly attached to the royal 
forest of Needwood, and the honour of Tutbury, 
of the whole of which the ancient family of De 
Ferrars were once the puissant lords. Their im- 
mense possessions, now forming part of the duchy 
of Lancaster, were forfeited by the attainder of 
Earl Ferrars, after his defeat at Burton Bridge, 
where he led the rebellious barons against Henry 
III. The Chartley estate, being settled in dower, 
was alone reserved, and handed down to its pres- 
ent possessor. In the park is preserved, in its 



120 MYSTERIOUS FORMS AND SIGNS. 

primitive purity, the indigenous Staffordshire cow, 
small in stature, of a sand- white colour, with black 
ears, muzzle, and tips at the hoofs. In the year 
of the battle of Burton Bridge a black calf was 
born, and the downfall of the great house of Fer- 
rars happening at the same period, gave rise to the 
tradition, which to this day has been held in venera- 
tion by the common people, that the birth of a parti- 
coloured calf from the wild breed in Chartley Park 
is a sure omen of death, within the same year, to a 
member of the lord's family. A calf of this descrip- 
tion has been born whenever a death has happened 
in the family of late years. The decease of the 
last earl and his countess, of his son Lord Tam- 
worth, of his daughter Mrs. William Jolliffe, as 
well as the deaths of the son and heir of the pres- 
ent nobleman and his daughter, Lady Frances 
Shirley, have each been forewarned by the ominous 
birth of a spotted calf. In the spring of a late year 
an animal perfectly black was calved by one of 
this weird tribe in the park of Chartley, and this 
birth also has been followed by the death of the 
countess. 

In the beautiful chapel of Rosslinne, founded by 
William Saint Clair, prince of Orkney, there is a 
legend of the spectral light which illumined its 
Gothic beauty on the eve of a death among his 
descendants. And my sweet Castaly will remem- 
ber how pathetically Harold sings the fate of Rosa- 
belle Saint Clair. 

In other districts, on the coming of such an event, 
these lights are seen of various colours, and are 
termed " Dr' Eug" — " the Death of the Druid" — 
and they also marshal the funeral procession to the 
very verge of the grave. 

Dr. Caldicot solemnly writes that, when a Chris- 
tian is drowned in the Dee, a light appears over 



MYSTERIOUS FORMS AND SIGNS. 121 

the spot, by which the body is easily discovered; 
and hence the river is called " Holy" Dee. 

The mysteries of the " Skibbereen Lights" are 
recorded by an honourable gentleman of Ireland, 
and ladies and philosophers journeyed far to be- 
hold them, and believed. In a cottage in a marshy 
flat near Bantry lived a man named Harrington, a 
perfect anatomie vivante, and bedridden, his heart 
devout, his books all of a religious kind. In his 
chamber strange lights soon appeared, at first like 
the dim moonlight on the wall, deepening often into 
yellow light, and flickering round the room. There 
was often a group of literati and fashion assembled 
there, on whom the light danced, and displayed all 
the various emotions of the parties. Once at noon, 
but mostly at midnight, the light appeared ; and on 
all occasions Harrington seemed to anticipate be- 
fore others beheld them. Science has searched 
for causes ; but neither in the arts of an impostor 
or the natural exhalation of luminous gases has 
been yet discovered a solution of this mystery. 

In the wild country around Dolgelly, where 
Cader Idris frowns upon the floods and fells of 
Merioneth, where the Mawddach, after its magnif- 
icent fall, rolls its waters through the brown and 
purple valley to join the Wonion, and then expand 
into the mountain estuary of Abermaw, the wan- 
derer will hear from many lips this current story : 

On a dark evening a few winters ago, some per- 
sons were returning to Barmouth, on the south or 
opposite side of the river. As they approached 
the ferry-house at Penthryn, which is directly op- 
posite Barmouth, they observed a light near the 
house, which they conjectured to be produced by 
a bonfire, and greatly puzzled they were to dis- 
cover the reason why it should have been lighted. 
As they came nearer, however, it vanished ; and 
L 



122 MYSTERIOUS FORMS AND SIGNS. 

when they inquired at the house respecting it, they 
were surprised to learn that not only had the peo- 
ple there displayed no light, but they had not even 
seen one, nor could they perceive any signs of it on 
the sands. On reaching Barmouth the circum- 
stance was mentioned, and the fact corroborated by 
some of the people there, who had also plainly and 
distinctly seen the light. It was settled, therefore, 
by some of the old fishermen, that this was a " death 
token;" and, sure enough, the man who kept the 
ferry at that time was drowned, at high water, a 
few nights afterward, on the very spot where the 
light was seen. He was landing from the boat, 
when he fell into the water, and so perished. 

The same winter the Barmouth people, as well 
as the inhabitants of the opposite banks, were 
struck by the appearance of a number of small 
lights which were seen dancing in the air at a 
place called Borthwyn, about half a mile from the 
town. A great number of people came out to see 
these lights, and after a while they all but one dis- 
appeared, and this one proceeded slowly towards 
the water's edge to a little bay, where some boats 
were moored. The men in a sloop, which was an- 
chored near the spot, saw the light advancing ; they 
saw it also hover for a few seconds over one par- 
ticular boat, and then totally disappear. Two or 
three days afterward the man to whom that partic- 
ular boat belonged was drowned in the river, while 
he was sailing about Barmouth harbour in that 
very boat. 

On a lofty mountain rising over Marbach, in 
Austria, stands the church of Maria-Taferl, and 
miracles on miracles are related of this sacred spot 
since the time when the " Vesperbild," an image 
of the Virgin, was fixed on its oak. Even angels 
have visited the shrine. In the 17th century these 



MYSTERIOUS FORMS AND SIGNS. 123 

angelic visitants appeared in processions, bearing 
a red cross, while stars shone around the head of 
the Virgin. On one occasion a red cross was borne 
along and a taper was lighted, by no mortal hand, 
at the feet of the Vesperbild ; and this is recorded 
and attested by the crowd who gazed in wonder 
on the miracle. 

The trials of the two divines, John Huss and 
Wickliffe, were marked by awful and impressive 
phenomena. While the tribunal was sitting in 
judgment on Wickliffe, the monastery in which 
the English monks had assembled was nearly over- 
whelmed by an earthquake. And it chanced that 
while the council were in high assembly at Con- 
stance, which condemned Huss to the stake, the 
eclipse, which over that city was nearly total, oc- 
curred, and the consternation of the people, at that 
time prone to the belief of miracles, was extreme. 

" The night had waned ; but darkness and dismay- 
Rose with the dawn, and blotted out the day. 
The council's warder, struck with sudden fear, 
Dropp'd from his palsied hand th' uplifted spear. 
Aghast each gazer saw the mystic power, 
That robed in midnight's pall the matin hour ; 
While hurrying feet, and wailings to and fro, 
Spread the wild panic of impending wo. 
The prince and prelates shudder'd at the sign : 
The monk stood dumb before the darken'd shrine : 
With faltering hand upraised the cross on high, 
To chase that dismal omen from the sky." 

The wonders told me by one of my reverend 
ancestors of the " Aurora," years ago, are so cir- 
cumstantial, and withal so prophetic, that well 
might she, like the Lady of Branxholme, believe 
that " spirits were riding the northern blast." 

Speed repeats a record in the " Ypodigma Neus- 
triae" of " Walsingham," that the rebellion of the 
Percies was preceded by spectral battles in Bed- 
fordshire, " sundry monsters of divers colours and 
shapes issuing from woods," &c. 



124 MYSTERIOUS FORMS AND SIGNS. 

Remember, it is a matter of history that phan- 
tasms were seen by numbers in Whitehall during 
the Commonwealth ; and the wondrous narrative 
of The Just Devil of Woodstock, which was written 
in 1649, by Master Widows, the learned clerk of 
Woodstock, " who each day put in writing what 
he heard from the mouths of the commissioners, 
and such things as they told to have befallen them 
the night before, therein keeping to their own 
words." The coney-stealers were so alarmed that 
they left their ferrets beyond Rosamond's Well. 
And this he saith also, that " at Saint James's the 
Devil so joaled the centinals against the sides of 
the Queen's Chappell doors that some of them fell 
sick upon it, and others, not taking warning by it, 
killed one outright ; and all other such dreadful 
things those that inhabited the royal houses have 
been affrighted with." 

I remember not the source from which I gleaned 
some mysteries of " The Lyffe of Virgilius," a pro- 
fessor of the occult sciences, alluded to, I believe, 
in Gower's " Confessio Amantis," and identified 
with the Mantuan poet — a magus, who " dyd many 
marvayles in hys lyfe tyme by whychcrafte and 
nygramancye thorowgh the helpe of the devyls of 
hell." One of these marvels I well recollect. This 
Virgil was cut up, salted and pickled, at his own 
request, in a barrel ; and when the emperor dis- 
covered him, he slew Virgilius's man, and " then 
sawe the emperoure and all his folke a nakyd 
chylde, three tymes rennynge aboute the barell, 
sayinge the wordes, ' Cursed be the tyme that ye 
cam ever here ;' and with those wordes vanyshed 
the chylde away." 

Then, in the associations of lucky days and in- 
fluential colours, is there not often a striking truth '? 

Sir Kenelm Digby,Avrites Master Aubrey, among 



MYSTERIOUS FORMS AND SIGNS. 125 

other wonders of his " Miscellanies, " was born, 
fought, and conquered at Scanderoon, and died on 
the eleventh day of June. 

In a book printed in 1687, we learn that the 
fourteenth of October was a lucky day for the 
princes of England. On it William the Conqueror 
won the crown, Edward III. landed, and James 
II. was born. 

In the eventful life of Napoleon, the number 
eighteen was associated with so many important 
events, that you will scarce deny something more 
than casualty. Such were, the engagement from 
which he assumed the consulate ; that of Torlina 
on the river Beresina ; the battles of Leipsic and 
of Waterloo, which were all fought on the eigh- 
teenth of the month. On that day, also, his corpse 
was landed on St. Helena, and on the eighteenth, 
also, the " Belle Poule" sailed with his remains 
for France. 

As of the Emir of the East, green was the fa- 
vourite colour of the " Daoine Shi," or men of 
peace, in Scotland ; and the Druids waved a green 
standard, as we read in the Scandana, when they 
fought with the Fingallians. From some cause, 
perchance from their adoption of it, this colour was 
fatal to the clan " Grahame." The Highlanders 
believe to this day that the field of Killicrankie 
was lost because Dundee was habited in green 
uniform ; and an old Gragme, when his horse stum- 
bled at a foxchase, referred his disaster to his green 
whipcord. 

Do not so many sequences prove a consequence ] 

Ev. You do not mince the matter, Astrophel ; 
indeed, from the boldness of your display, I might 
think you had kissed the blarney -stone, by which 
charm the Irish believe you will ever after be free 
from bashfulness. 

L2 



126 ANALYSIS AND CLASSIFICATION 

But coincidence, and the natural leaning of the 
mind to superstition, will unfold all your myster ies £ 
and these your illustrations (I cannot term them 
arguments) are even weaker than the former. Re- 
member that the mind of some beings is impressi- 
ble as the yielding wax, and especially if under 
the constant influence of other minds, which, as 
continual dropping will wear away a stone, first 
tends to bewilder, and at length to convince. And 
as to the special trifles to which you allude, al- 
though it is certain a sparrow falls not to the ground 
without a Providence, and the hairs of our head 
are all numbered, I cannot believe that the Crea- 
tor will thus alter a gigantic law for an atom. 



ANALYSIS AND CLASSIFICATION OF 
SPECTRAL ILLUSION. 

" The earth hath bubbles, as the water has, 
And these are of them." — Macbeth. 

Ev. You are a most industrious gleaner among 
the sheaves of history, Astrophel. But why, in all 
these seeming prophecies, seek to thwart the har- 
monious course of nature ] Leave superstition to 
the heathen and the savage : be assured, in the 
words of Principal Robertson, that a vain desire of 
prying into futurity is the error of the infancy of a 
people, and a proof of its weakness. 

From this weakness proceeded the faith of the 
Americans in dreams, their observation of omens, 
their attention to the chirping of birds and the cries 
of animals, all which they supposed to be indica- 
tions of future events. And if any one of these 
prognostics was deemed unfavourable, they instant- 
ly abandoned the pursuit of those measures on 
which they were most eagerly bent. 



OF SPECTRAL ILLUSION. 127 

I wonder you brought not some classic proofs of 
this credulity, for such were all-prevalent in Judaea 
and the Eternal City. 

Thus, on February the thirteenth, the Romans 
were conquered by the Gauls ; henceforward im- 
portant acts were never undertaken on its anniver- 
sary ; nor on August the tenth by the Jews, be- 
cause their first temple was destroyed by Nebu- 
chadnezzar, and the other by Titus, long afterward, 
on that day of the month. 

I am not, however, without some curious stories 
of very modem date ; one anecdote may be rec- 
ognised on the Stock Exchange. A wealthy He- 
brew, who was wont to fling his gold even into the 
lap of kings, was once standing on a certain stone, 
at the postoffice, when he received a letter, on which 
he speculated, and lost 6620,000. On this he cau- 
tioned his friends never to stand on that stone, lest 
a similar ill fortune should attend them. 

The mind of this man was a storehouse of super- 
stition — an omen was his leading star. A drove of 
pigs would check the completion of a mighty bar- 
gain, and a flock of sheep would prompt him to sign 
his name to a million. 

The three brothers of his great house were once 
on their way to Lord Liverpool, in order to the 
completion of a loan to the treasury ; when, lo ! 
an army of swine met them on their way. There 
was no more progress to Downing-street that day ; 
but they retired to Stamford Hill, and the lord- 
treasurer waited twenty-four hours for the He- 
brew's gold. 

With Brinsley Sheridan, Friday was a sort of 
holyday ; neither journeys were undertaken, nor 
new plays allowed to be produced on that day. 

I presume you were ashamed to adduce orni- 
thoscopy, or the divination by birds, as an illustra- 



128 ANALYSIS AND CLASSIFICATION 

tion. Do you forget the mystic influence of three 
crows on man's destiny ] But I will tell you an 
Oriental fable — how an accomplished Jew, named 
Mosollam, puzzled an augur, by shooting a beau- 
tiful bird, from which the augur was about to proph- 
esy on the fate of an expedition. " "Why," said 
Mosollam, " did not the bird foreknow the fate 
which awaited it ] why did it not fly away, or why 
come at all]" 

Astr. I believe the augur did or might answer, 
that " a prophet may be ordained to tell the fate 
of nations, but not his ownP 

Ev. Another vague supposition, Astrophel : 
there is much virtue in these may he's. 

I have listened to your legends, and you will 
now listen to me, while I presume to illustrate my 
own proofs, searching for my causes in the beauti- 
ful eccentricities of nature alone ; and a scholar 
like yourself, Astrophel, with whom I have so often 
chopped Oxford logic, will grant it is a precept in 
philosophy not to seek for more causes than the ex- 
planation of the fact requires. 

On this scroll I have sketched an arrangement 
of phantoms or ghosts, in two grand classes. 

GHOSTS OP THE MIND'S EYE, OR PHANTASMA. 

Illusive perception, or ( Conversion of natural ob« 
ocular spectra. ( jects into phantoms. 

Illusive exception, or ) ^^ of hantoms< 
spectral illusion. ) r 

GHOSTS OF THE EYE, OR OPTICAL ILLUSION. 

A . , . f Refraction. 

Atmosphenc. j Reflection. 

Gases. 

Lenses and mirrors. 

Disease of the eye. 



OF SPECTRAL ILLUSION. 129 

In the first class there is no real or palpable ob- 
ject, or, if there be, it is not what it appears ; the 
illusion is but the reality of romance, depending 
altogether on excited or disordered conditions of 
the mind : the source, therefore, either of bright or 
gloomy phantoms, as the mood may be. 

On this scroll I have recorded those moods of 
mind, which, excited by memory or association, or 
influenced by such casualties as solitude, moonlight 
darkness, or localities of interest, or the poring over 
tales of horror at midnight, may be considered the 
predisposing causes of illusion. Such are : 
Temperament. . .Credulity, 

Enthusiasm, 
Superstition, 
Timidity, 
Imagination, 
Poetic phrensy. 
Excitement. . . . Sympathy, 
Exalted joy, 
Deep grief, 
Love, 
Hatred, 

Protracted anxiety, 
Delirium of fever, 
Delirium of alcohol, 
Delirium of narcotics, 
Exhaustion, 
Disease of the brain. 
The second class, which are spectres or ghosts 
of the eye, may be scientifically explained by the 
laws which govern the material world. These are 
the only substantial ghosts which I can grant to 
my friend. The objects themselves exist, and are 
exactly as they appear. The philosopher regards 
them as interesting exceptions to general rules, 
from peculiar combinations of natural causes. The 
9 



130 ANALYSIS AND CLASSIFICATION 

unlearned will term them preternatural phenomena, 
simply because they are of uncommon occurrence. 
But which among the works of Divine creation is 
not a phenomenon ] We may think we know a 
law of nature, but can we analyze it ] Novelty 
and magnitude astonish, but that which is familiar 
excites not our surprise. We gaze with delight 
on the progress of an eclipse ; we watch with won- 
der the eccentric course of the comet ; but we look 
on the sun in its meridian glory with a cold and 
apathetic indifference. Yet do they all alike dis- 
play Divine Omnipotence, and the expansion of a 
vegetable germ, the bursting of a flower, is as great 
a miracle as the overwhelming of a deluge, the an- 
nihilation of a mighty world. 

To discriminate between these classes is not dif- 
ficult; we may prove their nature by simple ex- 
periment. Optical illusions will be doubled by a 
straining or altering of the axes of the eyes ; and by 
turning round, as they are removed from the axis 
of vision, they will disappear. 

So, indeed, will those of the second class, which 
are real objects converted into phantoms by mental 
excitement or disorder. 

But in the purely metaphysical gliost or phantom, 
the change of position or locality will not essential- 
ly dispel the illusion (the spectrum following, as it 
were, the motion of the eye) ; because it exists in 
the mind itself, either as a faint or transient idea, 
or a mere outline, fading perhaps in a brighter light, 
or as the more permanent and confirmed impres- 
sion of insanity (unchanged even by " brilliant 
glare"), or from the day-dream of the castle-build- 
er to the deep and dreadful delusion of the maniac. 

Among the mute productions of nature, there 
are eccentricities and rarities, which, in default of 
analysis or explanation, would not fail of being re- 



OF SPECTRAL ILLUSION. 131 

ferred to some supernatural agency; as Leo Afer, 
according to Burton, accounts for the swarms of lo- 
custs once descending at Fez, in Barbary, and at 
Aries, in France, in 1553. " It could not be from 
natural causes ; they cannot imagine whence they 
come, but from heaven. Are these and such crea- 
tures, corn, wood, stones, worms, wool, blood, &c., 
lifted up into the middle region by the sunbeams, 
as Baracellus the physician disputes, and thence 
let fall with showers, or there engendered ? Cor- 
nelius Gemma is of that opinion, they are there 
conceived by celestial influences ; others suppose 
they are immediately from God, or prodigies raised 
by arts and illusions of spirits which are princes of 
the ayre." 

Over Lansruedoc there once burst an awful and 

o 

supernatural cloud, from which fell immense snow- 
flakes like glittering stars. There is nothing strange 
in this, for the shape of the snow-flake is ever that 
of an asteroid. But then there came pouring down 
gigantic hail-stones, with their glassy surface im- 
pressed with the figures of helmets, and swords, 
and scutcheons. This, too, may be the effect of very 
sudden and irregular congelation ; but this law was 
not known, and, therefore, its result was a mystery. 
Among the wonders seen by the great traveller, 
Pietro della Valla, was the bleeding cypress-tree, 
which shadows the tomb of Cyrus, in Italy. Under 
the hollow of its boughs, in his day, it was lighted 
with lamps, and was consecrated as an oratory. 
To this shrine resorted many a devout pilgrim, im- 
pressed with a holy belief in the miracle. And 
what was this but the glutinous crimson fluid ex- 
uding from the diseased alburnum of a tree, which 
the woodmen indeed term bleeding, but which the 
ancient Turks affirmed or believed to be convert- 
ed on every Friday into drops of real blood 1 ? 



132 ANALYSIS AND CLASSIFICATION 

The red snow, which is not uncommon in the 
Arctic regions, is thus tinted by very minute cryp- 
togamic plants ; and the fairy ring is but a circle of 
herbage poisoned by a fungus. 

In Denbighshire (I may add) the prevalent be- 
lief is, that the shivering of the aspen is from sym- 
pathy with that tree in Palestine, which was hewn 
into the true cross. 

The simple stratification of vapours, especially 
during sudden transitions of temperature, may pro- 
duce very interesting optical phenomena; not by 
refraction or reflection, but merely by partial ob- 
scuration of an object. We have examples of these 
illusive spectra in the gigantic icebergs seen by 
Captain Scoresby and other Arctic voyagers, which 
assumed the shape of towers, and spires, and cathe- 
drals, and obelisks, that were constantly displacing 
each other in whimsical confusion and endless va- 
riety, like the figures of a kaleidoscope. Phipps 
thus describes their majestic beauty : " The ice that 
had parted from the main body they had now time 
to admire, as it no longer obstructed their course ; 
the various shapes in which the broken fragments 
appeared were indeed very curious and amusing. 
One remarkable piece described a magnificent 
arch, so large and completely formed that a sloop 
of considerable burden might have sailed through 
it without lowering her masts. Another represent- 
ed a church, with windows, pillars, and domes." 

We may scarcely wonder at the mystifications 
of nature when she assumes these gorgeous eccen- 
tricities, a,s have been witnessed also in the barren 
steppes of the Caraccas, on the Orinoko, where the 
palm-groves appear to be cut asunder; in the 
Llanos, where chains of hills appear suspended in 
the air, and rivers and lakes to flow on arid sand ; 
in the Lake of the Gazelles, seen by the Arabs and 



OF SPECTRAL ILLUSION. 133 

the African traveller; and the lakes seen by Cap- 
tain Munday during his tour in India. 

The very clearness of the atmosphere, like that 
which floats around the Rhine, renders distance 
especially distinct ; but mountainous regions, from 
the attraction of electric clouds, afford the highest 
examples of atmospheric beauty and effect. Lon- 
don and other cities, however crowded with lofty 
buildings, are not deficient in these aerial illusions. 
Even from the bridge of Blackfriars I have seen a 
cumulo stratus cloud so strangely intersect the 
steeples and the giant chimneys of London, as dis- 
tinctly to represent a seaport, with its vessels and 
distant mountains. 

We have among us several minor illusions, which 
are only less imposing because more familiar ; and 
though often occurring, few are recorded with sci- 
entific accuracy. The phosphorescence of the 
marshes, the ignis fatuus, Will o' Wisp, Jack o' 
the Lantern, or Friar Rush, and the corpse-can- 
dles, are mere luminous exhalations, strained into 
the marvellous by the vulgar, and thus set down 
as heralds of mortality. The dancing light of lumi- 
nous flies has been termed the green light of Death; 
and if you wish for more, Astrophel, read the " Ar- 
morican Magazine" of John Wesley, or the quaint 
volume of Burton, and thereabouts where he writes 
in this fashion : " The thickness of the aire may 
cause such effects, or any object not well discerned 
in the dark, fear and fantasie will suspect to be a 
ghost or devil. Glowwormes, firedrakes, meteors, 
ignis fatuus, which Plinius calls Castor and Pol- 
lux, with many such that appear in moorish grounds, 
about churchyards, moist valleys, or where battles 
have been fought, the causes of which read in Go- 
clenius, Velcurius, Finkius," &c. 

The Parhelia, or mock suns, are produced by 
M 



134 ANALYSIS AND CLASSIFICATION 

the reflection of the sun's light on a frozen cloud. 
How readily these phenomena are magnified you 
may learn from ancient and modern records. In 
1223, four suns were seen of crimson, enclosed in a 
wide circle of crystal colour. This is natural : but 
then comes the miracle. In the same year two giant 
dragons were seen in the air, flapping their mon- 
strous wings and engaging in single combat, until 
they both fell into the sea and were drowned ! 
Then, in 1104, there were seen four white circles 
rolled around the sun ; and in 1688, two suns and a 
reversed rainbow appeared at Bishop's Lavington, 
in Wiltshire ; and in February, 1647, there is an ac- 
count and sketch of three suns, and an inverted 
rainbow, which Baxter terms " Binorum Parelio- 
rum Qaivofievov." And because there were two 
lunar and one solar eclipses in 1652, it was called, 
as Lily records, " Annus tenebrum," or " the dark 
year." 

fhe corona, or halo around the sun, moon, and 
stars, is easily illustrated by the zone formed by 
placing, during a frost, a lighted candle in a cloud 
of steam or vapour. 

The Aurora Borealis is arctic electricity, and is 
beautifully imitated by the passage of an electric 
flash through an exhausted glass cylinder. 

The rainbow is a combination of natural prisms 
breaking the light into colours ; and it may be seen 
in the cloud, or in the spray of the ocean, or in the 
beautiful cascades of Schaffhausen, Niagara, or 
Terni, or, indeed, in any foaming spray on which 
the meridian sunbeams fall, or even in the dewy 
grass, lying, as it were, on the ground. 

When the sun shines on a cloud there is always 
a bow produced visible to all who are placed at 
the proper angle. The lunar rainbow is achro- 
matic, or destitute of colour, because reflected light 



OF SPECTRAL ILLUSION. 135 

is not easily refracted into colour. In a brilliant 
sunset the floods of light around him often indicate 
the gradation of prismatic colouring. 

Cast. In some waterfalls I have seen the iris 
form a complete circle, as in the Velino at Terni, 
and in others, especially in Ionia and Italy. A 
perfect illusion is produced, for the bow seems to 
approach the spectator and then recede, as if Juno 
were sending her messenger on some special mis- 
sion. There are many minds which would yield 
with delight to this conviction, and such probably 
was the illusion of Benvenuto Cellini, was it not 1 
" This resplendent light is to be seen over my 
shadow till two o'clock in the afternoon, and it ap- 
pears to the greatest advantage when the grass is 
moist with dew. It is likewise visible in the even- 
ing at sunset. This phenomenon I took notice of 
when I was at Paris, because the air is exceedingly 
clear in that climate, so that I could distinguish it 
there much plainer than in Italy, where the moists 
are much more frequent," &c. A consciousness 
of superior talent, and probably the homage which 
was paid him even by the members of the holy 
conclave, were the springs of this flattering vision. 

Ida. The beauty of these must light up even the 
fancy of a child, yet a holier feeling will ever in- 
spire a Christian philosopher when the bow is seen 
in the cloud, for it was the sign of the covenant. 
There is, indeed, something in the glories of the 
firmament which never fails to elevate my own 
thoughts, and I can readily sympathize with the 
Spanish religionists of the fifteenth century, and 
with the North Americans, who gaze upon the 
beautiful constellation of the " Southern Cross," 
insulated as it is from all other stars in its own dark 
space, in solemn belief that it is the great symbol- 
ical banner held out by the Deity in approval of 
their faith. 



136 ANALYSIS AND CLASSIFICATION 

Ev. The " Fata Morgana," in the Straits of 
Reggio, presents a perfect scene of enchantment, 
when the shouts of " Morgana, Morgana," echo 
from rock and mountain, as the wondering people 
flock in crowds to the shore. During this splendid 
illusion, gigantic columns, and cloud-capped tow- 
ers, and gorgeous palaces, and solemn temples are 
floating on the verge of the horizon, and sometimes 
beneath this picture of a city, on the very bosom 
of the water, a fainter spectrum may be seen, which 
is a reflected image of the other. These spectra 
are usually colourless, but if certain watery vapours 
are floating in the air, they are beautifully fringed 
with the three primitive colours of the prism. Such, 
also, is the illusion of the calenture, or sylvan scenes 
of the ocean. 

Cast. Let us seek these wonders of the waters, 
Astrophel ; perchance we might, in some enchant- 
ed hour, see even beneath yon Severn flood the 
grotto of Sabrina, with its green and silver weeds, 
its purple shells and arborescent corallines ; and, if 
we dive into the depths of the sea, might we not 
light on the palace of Amphitrite, and, while the 
Nereids and Tritons were mourning over the deso- 
lation of a shipwreck, hear the echo of some Ariel's 
song, " full fathom five," undulating through the 
water, or realize the overwhelming of Maha-Veli- 
poor, in the curse of Kehama : 

" Their golden summits in the noontide ray 
Shone o'er the dark, green deep, that roll'd between; 
For domes, and pinnacles, and spires were seen 
Peering above the sea." 

Or the legend of Thierna Na Oge, in Lough 
Neagh, in Ireland ; for Moore has sung, 

" On Lough Neagh's banks, when the fisherman strays, 
He sees the round towers of other days ;" 

and why may not we ? 



OF SPECTRAL ILLUSION. 137 

Who that has wandered among the dark mount- 
ains of Brecon remembers not the blue pool of 
Lynsavaddon, and has not listened to the tales of 
the mountaineers of the city over which, to this 
day, its waves are rolling 1 and in the beautiful 
Vale of Eidournion, in Merioneth — but listen to a 
fragment of a romance of this valley which, from 
memory, I quote : 

" There was a proud and wealthy prince in 
Gwyneth, when the beautiful isle was under the 
rule of the Cymri. At his palace-gate a voice was 
once heard echoing among the mountains these 
words : ' Edivar a ddau' — Repentance will come. 
The prince demanded ' When]' and in the rolling 
thunder the voice was again heard, ' At the third 
generation.' 

" Nothing daunted, the wicked lord lived on, com- 
mitting plunder and all evil excesses, and laughing 
to scorn the holy hymns in the churches. A son 
and heir was born to him, and there was a gor- 
geous assemblage in the hall of beautiful ladies 
and highborn nobles to celebrate the festival of his 
birth. 

" It was midnight, when, in the ear of an old harp- 
er, a shrill voice whispered, ' Edivar, Edivar ;' and 
a little bird hovered over him, and flew out of the 
palace in the pale moonshine, and the harper and 
the little bird went together into the mountains. 
The bird flitted before him in the centre of the 
moon's disk, and warbled its mournful cry of ' Edi- 
var' so plaintively, that the old man thought of the 
shriek of his little child Gwenhwyvar as she sunk 
beneath the waters of Glaslyn. 

" On the top of the mountain he sank down with 

weariness, and the little bird was not with him ; 

all was silent save the cataract and the sheep-bells 

on the mountain side. In alarm at the wild soli- 

M2 



138 ANALYSIS AND CLASSIFICATION 

tude around him, he turned towards the castle, but 
its lordly towers had vanished, and in the place of 
its woods and turrets there was a waste of rolling 
waters, with his lone harp floating on their sur- 
face." 

Ev. I am unwilling to check your flight, fair 
Castaly, but my illustrations are not yet exhausted. 

The " Spectre of the Brocken" is a mere shadow 
of the spectator on a gigantic scale. This phan- 
tom, the " Schattenmann," according to vulgar tra- 
dition, haunts the lofty range of the Hartz Mount- 
ains in Hanover. It is usually observed when the 
sun's rays are thrown horizontally on thin, fleecy 
clouds, or vapour of highly reflective power, as- 
suming the shape of a gigantic shade on the cloud. 

The romantic region of the Hartz was the grand 
temple of Saxon idolatry — the very hotbed of ter- 
rible shadows — the first of May, especially, being 
the grand annual rendezvous of unearthly forms. 
Even now, it is affirmed, Woden, known in Bruns- 
wick as the Hunter of Hackelburgh (whose sepul- 
chre, an immense rough stone, is shown to the 
traveller), is still influential in the Oden Wald and 
among the ruins of "Rodenstein ; even as in our 
own Lancashire, a dark, gigantic horseman rushes 
on a giant steed, in stormy nights, over " Horrock 
Moor ;" indeed, a spot or tomb is still shown where 
he used to disappear. 

Thus are the " Spectres of the Brocken" invest- 
ed with supernatural dignity in the minds of cre- 
dulity and ignorance. And no wonder; for, al- 
though the discoverer of this gigantic illusion, Mr. 
Jordan, might convince the Germans of the nature 
of this shadow, how could the credulous believe, 
when they beheld a second figure, a faint refracted 
spectrum of the shadow, that it was any other than 
the shadow king of the Brocken himself, frowning 
defiance on intruders. 



OF SPECTRAL ILLUSION. 139 

And this reminds me of the confession of Gaffarel, 
in his " Unheard-of Curiosities" of the seventeenth 
century, in his quaint chapter on the " readynge of 
the cloudes and whatever else is seene in the air, 
and of hieroglyphicks in the cloudes." 

Among other miraculous illusions, as recorded by 
Cardanus, '* An angel once wafted on the cloudes 
above Millane, and great was the consternation at 
its appearance, until Pellicanus, a philosopher, 
made it plainly appear that this angel was nothing 
else but the reflection of an image of stone that 
was on the top of the church of Saint Godart, 
which was represented in the thick cloudes as in a 
looking-glasse." 

While I was in South Wales in 1836, I con- 
versed with a labourer in the Cyfarthfa works at 
Merthyr Tydvil, an illiterate seer, who saw three 
times appearing before him an unsubstantial tram- 
road, and on it a train drawn by a horse, and in 
this the dead body of a man. Twice this shadoiv 
emerged from the earth, and on the third ascent 
he looked on it and recognised the well-known face 
of a comrade. The man was horror-struck, but 
his friend lived to laugh at him. 

When my friend, Mr. David Taylor, ascended 
the mountain that rises over Chamouni, on the op- 
posite side of the valley to Mont Blanc, his magni- 
fied shadow was distinctly seen by him on the va- 
poury cloud that floated between these giant rocks. 

In February, 1837, two gentlemen, on whom I 
confidently trust, were standing on Calton Hill 
while a murky cloud hung over Edinburgh. Above 
this veil Arthur's Seat peeped out like a rocky isl- 
and beneath two white arches, like the lunar bows ; 
and on the cloud itself, each gentleman saw the 
shadow of his companion magnified to gigantic 
proportions. 



140 ANALYSIS AND CLASSIFICATION 

The aeronaut, among other glories of 'his ascent, 
may by chance be gratified by the shadow of his 
balloon on the face of a cumulus cloud ; thus did 
the Duke of Brunswick, who ascended with Mrs. 
Graham, in August, 1836. And this is the analo- 
gous recital of Prince Puckler Muskau, in his 
" Tutti Frutti." 

" We dipped insensibly into the sea of clouds 
which enveloped us like a thick veil, and through 
which the sun appeared like the moon in Ossian. 
This illumination produced a singular effect, and 
continued for some time, till the clouds separated, 
and we remained swimming about beneath the 
once more clear azure heavens. Shortly after we 
beheld, to our great astonishment, a species of 
' Fata Morgana,' seated upon an immense mount- 
ain of clouds, the colossal picture of the balloon 
and ourselves surrounded by myriads of variegated 
rainbow tints. A full half hour the spectral re- 
flected picture hovered constantly by our side. 
Each slender thread of the network appeared dis- 
tended to the size of a ship's cable, and we our- 
selves two tremendous giants enthroned on the 
clouds." 

The phantom which rode side by side with Tur- 
pin might be a mere reflected shadow in the mist; 
indeed, Burton writes that " Vitellio hath such an- 
other instance of a familiar acquaintance of his, 
that, after the want of three or four nights' sleep, 
as he was riding by a river side, saw another riding 
with him, and using all such gestures as he did, 
but when more light appeared it vanished" 

The principles of refraction are the sources of 
many an illusion, which is startling even to those 
who are aware of them. The sea, the vessels 
floating on its surface, the rocks and buildings on 
its shores, often appear elevated far beyond their 



OF SPECTRAL ILLUSION. 141 

usual position ; things are thus presented to the 
eye which, in the direct course of the rays, would 
be completely out of sight ; and the praises bestow- 
ed on the Irish telescope may not have been a bull, 
although we are assured that we may see through 
it round the corner. 

Baron Humboldt, Mr. Huddart, Professor Vince, 
Captain Scoresby, and others, will entertain you 
with these natural eccentricities, if you read the 
learned letter of Sir David Brewster on " Natural 
Magic;" and he will teach you how easy is the 
solution of all these marvels on the principles of 
atmospheric reflection. Yet how many are there 
who are not contented with the light of our phi- 
losophy, though it may fall like a sunbeam on the 
mind. Like the recorder of the " Unheard-of Cu- 
riosities," they at one time confess the optical il- 
lusion, as when the Romans " saw their navy in the 
clouds ;" at another, as when Constantine profess- 
ed to see the " Crosse shining most gloriously in 
the aire," marked with the motto, " In hoc signo 
vinces :" philosophy was silent, and they believed 
it might be divine. 

But a mind in its state of nature, cannot know all 
this. If a savage looked on the two white horses 
cut on the chalk hills of Berkshire and of Wiltshire, 
on the white cross of the Saxons on the Bledlow 
Ridge in Buckinghamshire, and on the white-leaf 
cross near Princes Risborough, would he not deem 
them deities, or the work of a magician or a devil? 

When the sailors of Lord Nelson saw the bloat- 
ed corpse of the murdered Prince Caraccioli float- 
ing erect in the water directly towards their ship, 
can we wonder they should deem it a supernatural 
visitation 1 

When Franklin set his bells a ringing by draw- 
ing down the electric fluid from the thunder- cloud* 



142 ANALYSIS AND CLASSIFICATION 

and when Columbus told to the hour the sun's 
eclipse, can we wonder that the transatlantic In- 
dians listened as to one endued with preternatu- 
ral knowledge, or that the other might be thought 
superhuman ] And when the King of Siam was 
assured that water could be congealed into ice on 
which the sounding skate could glide, can we won- 
der that he smiled in absolute disbelief of such a 
change, and called the tale a lie. 

Thus, when the peasants of Cardigan, who were 
not versed in Pontine architecture, looked on the 
bridge which the monks of Yspitty Cen Vacn had 
thrown across the torrent of the Mo?iac7i, they could 
not believe it a work of human, but of infernal 
hands, and called it the " Devil's Bridge." 

On my ascent of the Vann mountain in Brecon, 
there often came a mass of limestone rolling down 
the precipice. " Ah, sure," said the old shepherd, 
Who was watching his fold on the mountain-side, 
il the fairies are at their gambols, master, for they 
sometimes do play at bowls with these chalk 
fitones." Such was his explanation ; but, on my 
gaining another ridge of the Brecon Beacon, I start- 
led a whole herd of these fairies, who scudded off 
as fast as their legs could carry them, having first 
changed themselves into a flock of sheep. 

There was once a caravan journeying from Nu- 
bia to Cairo, which met the savans attending on 
the expedition of Napoleon into Egypt, among 
whom was Rigo the painter. Struck with the deep 
character of expression in the face of one of the 
Nubians, Rigo induced him, with gold, to sit for his 
portrait. The African sat calmly perusing its prog- 
ress until the laying on of the colours, when, with a 
cry of terror, he rushed from the house, and to his 
awe-struck companions affirmed that his head and 
half his body had been cut off by an enchanter. 



OF SPECTRAL ILLUSION. 143 

And this impression was not solitary, for an assem- 
blage of the Nubians were equally terror-struck, 
and (somewhat like those monomaniacs who refuse 
to drink water which reflects their faces, believing 
that they are sivallowing their friends), could never 
be dispossessed of the notion that the picture was 
formed of the loppings and toppings of the human 
frame. 

We believe these influences the more, because 
we see that, even to some few men wiser than they, 
a leaning to superstition will warp a single fact into 
a wonder ; and that mere sensitiveness of mind 
may work as great a fear. 

Suetonius tells us that Caligula and Augustus 
were the most abject cowards in a thunder-storm ; 
and the Bishop of Langres, D'Escaro, fell in a faint- 
ing-fit whenever an eclipse took place, a weakness 
which at length proved his death. 

There was an old house in Angouleme, the " Cha- 
teau du Diable," on the spot where the sable fiend 
was wont to repair to enjoy his moonlight walk. 
The house was never finished, for the devil, jealous 
of his usurpation, like Michael Scott's spirit, de- 
stroyed every night the walls which had been erect- 
ed during the day. At length the men abandoned 
their work in despair. On the twenty-fifth night 
in May (1840) the ruined windows seemed on an 
instant in brilliant illumination, which struck the 
inhabitants of the little village of " Petit-Rochford" 
with wonder and dismay. Some dauntless heroes, 
however, sallied forth with weapons to storm the 
enchanted castle. In an upper room, lighted by 
eight blood-red wax candles, they discovered a 
man of a strange and melancholy aspect tracing cab- 
alistic figures on the sanded floor. He was convey- 
ed to the maire, and was proved to be a poor sawyer 
named Favreau, who, bound by a superstitious oath, 



144 ILLUSIONS OP ART. 

self administered, had thus created a sensation of 
terror throughout a whole community. 

In the records of the Harleian Miscellany, the 
curious reader may discover one which might im- 
press his mind with some terrific ideas of the natu- 
ral history of the south of England in the seven- 
teenth and eighteenth centuries. It is styled " The 
True and Wonderful." The portion of the MSS. 
to which I allude is the " Legend of the Serpent 
of St. Leonard's Forest." This terrific legend of 
my own native town was a favourite of my boyish 
days : it has moulted some feather of its once aw- 
ful interest, and is now but the shadow of a mem- 
ory ; and those who were once converts to its real- 
ity now laugh the legend to scorn. 



ILLUSIONS OF ART. 

" If in Naples 
I should report this now, would they believe me?" — Tempest. 

Ev. The science of chemistry has unfolded most 
of the secrets of material miracles, as Psychology 
those of the intellect and senses. 

Not that I would attempt thus to explain your 
wonders of Palingenesy, Astrophel ; I will rather 
favour you with another batch, for I was once fond 
of unkennelling these sly foxes. 

It is solemnly attested by the noble secretary of 
a Duke of Guise, that, in company with many sci- 
entific men, he saw the face of a person in his 
blood, which had been given by a bishop, for ex- 
periment, to La Pierre, the chemist of Le Temple, 
near Paris. 

There is an old book of one Dr. Garmann, " De 
Miraculis Mortuorum," and thus he writes : ''When 
human salt, extracted and depurated from the scull 



ILLUSIONS OF ART. 145 

of a man, was placed in a water-dish, there ap- 
peared next morning in the mass figures of men 
fixed to a cross;" and "when human sculls, on 
which mosses had vegetated, were pounded, the 
family of the apothecary who pounded them were 
alarmed in the night by strange and terrific noises 
from the chamber." 

The body of the Cid, Ruy Diaz, as we read in 
Heywood's " Hierarchie," sat in state at the altar 
of the Cathedral at Toledo for ten years. A Jew 
one day attempted, in derision, to pull him by the 
beard ; but on the first touch the Cid started up, 
and, in high resentment, scared the Israelite away 
by the unsheathing of his mighty sword. And 
Master Planche has brought you legends from the 
church of Maria Taferl in Lower Austria, and 
other noted spots on the Danube. 

When Bernini's bust of Charles I. was being con- 
veyed in a barge on the Thames, from a strange 
bird there descended a drop of blood on the bust, 
which could never he effaced. 

This is nothing but a fact in nature mystified, 
and (like the growth of the Christmas flowering- 
thorn of Glastonbury from the walking-staff of 
Joseph of Arimathea) is too glaring to be miscon- 
strued. 

Other of these blood miracles are still more easy 
of solution. The blood spots from David Rizzio 
are shown to this day in Holyrood ; and it was be- 
lieved that after the Irish massacre, the blood of 
the victims then slain on Portnedown Bridge has 
indelibly stained its battlements. But these spots 
are nothing but the brown vegetative stains which 
geology has discovered on many fossils. 

Now listen to Father Gregory of Tours : "A 
thief was committing sacrilege at the tomb of Saint 
Helius, when the saint caught him by the skirt, 
9 N 



146 ILLUSIONS OF ART. 

and held him fast." Probably his garment hitched 
on a nail. Another old man, while removing a 
stone from the grave of a saint, was in a moment 
struck blind, dumb, and deaf. Probably the me- 
phitic gases exhaling from the tomb were the 
source of all this mystery. 

Then, as to the impositions of the priesthood : In 
Naples was the blood of Saint Januarius concealed 
in a vial, and on certain solemn days this so-called 
blood really became liquefied ; but it was effected 
secretly by chemical means ; and, I remember, the 
archbishop who confessed the secret to the French 
general Championet was exiled by the Vatican. 

In the reign of Henry VIII., too (I quote from 
Hume), other bloody secrets of this sort were un- 
folded. " At Hales, in the county of Gloucester, 
there had been shown during several ages the 
blood of Christ brought from Jerusalem ; and it is 
easy to imagine the veneration with which such a 
relic was regarded. A miraculous circumstance 
also attended this relic. The sacred blood was 
not visible to any one in mortal sin, even when set 
before him ; and, till he had performed good works 
sufficient for his absolution, it would not deign to 
discover itself to him. At the dissolution of the 
monastery the whole contrivance was detected. 
Two of the monks, who were let into the secret, 
had taken the blood of a duck, which they re- 
newed every week ; they put it iu a vial, one side 
of which consisted of thin and transparent crystal, 
the other of thick and opaque. When any rich 
pilgrim arrived, they were sure to show him the 
dark side of the vial till masses and offerings had 
expiated his offences, and then, finding his money, 
or patience, or faith nearly exhausted, they made 
him happy by turning the vial." 

But there is no end to relics in Italy. Even two 



ILLUSIONS OF ART. 147 

hundred years ago, John Evelyn makes out this 
catalogue of those he saw in St. Mark's at Venice : 

" Divers heads of saints, enchased in gold ; a 
small ampulla, or glass, with our Saviour's blood ; 
a great morsel of the real cross ; one of the nails ; 
a thorn ; a fragment of the column to which our 
Lord was bound when scourged; a piece of St. 
Luke's arm ; a rib of St. Stephen ; and a finger 
of Mary Magdalen!" 

Among the more innocent illusions of art, I may 
remind you of concave and cylindrical mirrors and 
lenses, the magic lantern, " les ombres Chinoises," 
and the phantasmagoria of Cagliostro, by which 
daggers appear to strike the breast of the specta- 
tor, and images of objects in other rooms are 
thrown on the walls of that in which we are sitting. 
A mirror thus accidentally placed has afforded the 
evidence of murder within our own time. 

The duration of impressions on the eye is an- 
other source of illusion. An image remains on the 
retina, I believe, about the eighth of a second ; as 
it departs, if another object supplies its place in 
quick succession, the two images form, as it were, 
a union, and become blended. A knowledge of 
this law, in the ages of blind superstition, would 
have placed an overwhelming weapon in the hands 
of priestcraft ; in our day it is the source of ra- 
tional and innocent pleasure, by the invention of 
optical toys. 

The whisking of an ignited stick produces a 
fiery circle. Why ] Because from excessive rapid- 
ity the rays from one point remain impressed on 
the retina until the revolution completes the circle. 

The thaumatrope, or wonder-turner, and the 
phantasmascope, are ingenious illustrations of this 
law of impression ; so also is the whirling machine, 
which so beautifully evinces the fact of white being 



148 ILLUSIONS OF ART. 

compounded of all the prismatic colours, blended 
in certain proportions. The jjrismatic iris is paint- 
ed on a revolving circle : by excessive rapidity of 
revolution, the colours are actually blended (as if 
mixed in a vessel) on the retina, and the surface 
of the machine is white to the eye. 

To these maybe added the combustion of phos- 
phorus and other substances in oxygen : red, 
green, and blue lights, which change the angel 
face of beauty into the visage of a demon ; and the 
inhalation of noxious fumes and gases, creating 
altogether a new train of phantoms in the world 
of experimental magic, and developing the for- 
merly occult mysteries of the art of incantation. 

Chance may also involve a seeming mystery of 
very awful import. Some years ago the town of 
Reading was thus bewildered. On the loaves were 
seen the most mysterious signs : on one, a skele- 
ton's head and cross-bones ; on another, the word 
" resurgam ;" on another, a date of death was 
marked in deep impressions. The loaves of course 
were, by some mysterious influence, the vehicles 
of solemn warning from the Deity. 

The baker was churchwarden of St. Giles's : his 
oven needed flooring, and, winking at the sacri- 
lege, he stole the flat, inscribed tombstones from 
the churchyard, and therewith floored his oven. 
From the inscriptions of these stones the loaves 
took their mystic impressions. 

In the reign of Edward the Martyr, during one 
of the synods assembled by Dunstan, the floor of 
the chamber suddenly gave way, involving the 
death of many of its members. It chanced that 
Dunstan had on that day warned the king not to 
attend the synod, and the only beam which did not 
give way was that on which his own chair was 
placed. This might be coincidence merely, al- 



( 



ILLUSTRATION OF MYSTERIOUS SOUNDS. 149 

though I believe it was discovered that it was a 
concerted trick ;t but the preservation of the king 
and the priest was, of course, attributed to special 
interference of the Deity;, 

But there is one phenomenon in animal chem- 
istry so rare, and, indeed, so wonderful, that there 
are few, even among philosophers, who can give it 
credence. This is " spontaneous combustion," the 
result of an evolution of phosphorated hydrogen 
from the blood, the remote cause of which may be 
traced, in some cases, to the free use of alcohol. 
The records of these cases are very circumstantial, 
especially the two most remarkable, that of the 
Contessa Cornelia Bandi, of Cerena, and of Don 
Bertholi, an ecclesiastic of Mount Valerius. But 
I check my wanderings into this maze of mystery 
in pity to your patience, fair ladies ; for I perceive 
Astrophel is again out of our sphere, and, envel- 
oped in the cloud of his own mystic meditations, 
will not know that this spontaneous combustion is 
almost as wondrous a tale as his " Lady of the 
Ashes." 



ILLUSTRATION OF MYSTERIOUS 
SOUNDS. 

" The isle is full of noises, 
Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not. 
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments 
"Will hum about mine ears, and sometimes voices." 

Tempest. 

Ev. So, you see, the effect of novelty is never 
more powerfully displayed than by unusual im- 
pressions on the finer senses ; that appearances 
which the eye perceives, and which the mind can- 
not explain, become phantoms, involving some spe- 
cial motive of wonder or dismay. 
N 2 



150 ILLUSTRAT ON OF MYSTERIOUS SOUNDS. 

So eccentric impressions on the mechanism of 
the internal ear may be equally illusive. ] We have 
ghosts of the ear as well as of the eye. 

As ignorance has often warped the optical phe- 
nomena which certain atmospheric changes may 
produce, so peculiar and unusual sounds may be 
accounted for on equally erroneous principles, es- 
pecially if they chance to resemble sounds which 
are the effects of daily or common causes. 

As the Hebrew bards hung their harps by the 
waters of Babylon, the Irish were wont, during 
their mourning for the death of a chief, to loosen 
their harp-strings and hang them on the trees; and 
while the wind swept the strings, they ever believ- 
ed that the harp itself sympathized in their sorrow. 

Thus, when the lament, or " ullaloo" of these 
wild Milesians boomed along the mountain glens, 
mingled with the coione, or funeral song, and the 
poetical cadence blended with the winds, how easy 
to impart to it a more than human source ; and 
thus the dismal coronach among the Scottish High- 
lands may be mystified into the " boding scream of 
the banshee." 

It is a classical question whether the rebel giant 
Typhosus was crushed by Jupiter beneath the isl- 
and of Inarime or Mount jEtna ; but it might readily 
be believed by the Sicilian, who had read this my- 
thological tale, that the volcanic convulsions arose 
from the vain struggles for freedom of this monster, 
who sent forth flames from his mouth and eyes. 

Within a mountain of Stony Arabia, to the north 
of Tor, very strange noises are often heard, as of 
the striking of an harmonic hammer, or the sound 
of a humming-top, which completely infuriate the 
camels on the mountain when they hear it. The 
Arabs believe these sounds to proceed from a sub- 
terranean convent of monks, the priest of which, to 



ILLUSTRATION OF MYSTERIOUS SOUNDS. 151 

assemble them to prayer, strikes with a hammer 
on the nakous, a metallic rod suspended in the air. 
/M. Teetzen, who visited the spot, assures us that 
\the cause of all this is the mere rolling of volumes 
lof sand from the summit and sides of the mountain. 
I In the last century, I remember there was a le- 
gend current in the west of England of the " Buc- 
ca," a demon whose howling was heard amid the 
blast that swept along the shore. It was a sure 
foreboding of shipwreck. The prophecy was often 
but too fully verified, but the voice of the demon 
was merely the premonitory gale from one certain 
quarter, which is always the av ant-courier of a tem- 
pest. 

I remember, when I was a child, the prevalent 
belief in Horsham, that, at a certain hour of the 
night, the ghost of Mrs. Hamel was heard groaning 
in her vault, beneath the great eastern window, and 
it required some self-possession to walk at midnight 
around this haunted tomb ; for few would believe 
that the noises were nothing more than the wind 
sweeping along the vaulted aisles of the church. 

Those very extraordinary impositions on the 
sense of hearing at Woodstock, in the truth of which, 
Astrophel, your faith was so firm, were resorted to 
to create terror and effect a political purpose. In 
" the genuine History of the good Devil of Wood- 
stock," written in 1649, we are told of the pealing 
of cannon, the barking of do^s, and neighing" of 
horses, and other mysterious sounds, which certain- 
ly created the greatest wonder and anxiety, until 
" funny Joe Collins" explained and demonstrated 
all the mechanical process of this imposture. You 
will find, also, the account of these gems of marvel- 
lous history in Sinclair and Plott, and the chron- 
icles of those days, which eclipse the haunted house 
of Athenodorus in Pliny. 



152 ILLUSTRATION OF MYSTERIOUS SOUNDS. 

In the sixteenth century, Master Samuel Stryck 
discussed the whole question regarding these haunt- 
ed houses, and warnings of ghosts, and belief in 
the reality of apparitions, in his work published at 
Francofurt, " De Jure Spectrorum," and thus he 
runs up the question of damages : " If the house be 
haunted, the tenant might bring in a set-off against 
his rent, thus : l Deduct for spectres in bed and 
bedroom, and elsewhere, <£5 10s.' " 

The drama of the Drummer, by Addison, I be- 
lieve was founded on the mystery of the " Demon 
of Tedworth," which beat the drum in the house 
of Mr. Mompesson. This also was the source of 
extreme wonder, until the drummer was tried and 
convicted, and Mr. Mompesson confessed that the 
mystery was the effect of contrivance. 

The author of the Pandemonium, or Devil's Cloy- 
ster, garnished his book with tales of this nature. 
In 1667, when he slept in "my Lady chamber," 
in the house of a nobleman, he was waited on by 
a succession of spectral visiters ; the explanation 
of which Ferriar and Hibbert, and others, have 
wrought for you, if you deign to turn over the leaves 
of their natural philosophy. 

The impostures of the Stockwell miracles of 
1772 are recorded, with other curiosities, in the 
" Every-day Book" of Hone, the skilful and un- 
wearied collector of our ancient mysteries. 

The Cock-lane ghost is another instance of illu- 
sion in the ears of the credulous. Although Dr. 
Johnson, the Bishop of Salisbury, and other learn- 
ed Thebans, sat in solemn judgment to develop its 
mystery, I believe many were so in love with the 
marvellous that they regretted the unravelling of 
the plot, and still believed, as Commodore Trun- 
nion, in despite of evidence as to the fluttering in 
his chimney, swore that he knew a devil from a 
jackdaw as well as any man in the kingdom. 



/ 



ILLUSTRATION OF MYSTERIOUS SOUNDS. 153 

Astr. I wonder, Evelyn, at your veneration for 
the classics ; for are they not replete with stories, 
which, if true (and I believe them so), will under- 
mine all your philosophy ! When Pausanias writes 
of the ghosts at Marathon, of horses and men who 
were heard rushing on to battle four hundred years 
after they were slain, and Plutarch of the spec- 
tres and supernatural sounds in the baths at Chse- 
ronea, the scene of bloodshed and murder, what 
may be their motives but the record of acknowl- 
edged incidents ? 

Ev. The classics, if they might rise up and listen, 
would believe me, dear Astrophel, so clear and 
simple is the source of these illusions. 

Of the credulity of the Romans I have spoken ; 
but, even in minds not prone to superstition, deep 
mental impression, or constant dwelling on a sub- 
ject of interest, will effect this illusion of a sense. 

In Holy Island, near the ruins of the convent (in 
the dungeons of which romance has decided the 
fate of Constance Beverley), was a small fortress 
of invalid soldiers. One of them once conducted 
a visiter to a steep rock, under which, he said, there 
must be a profound cavern, as the sound of a bell 
was distinctly heard every night at twelve o'clock, 
deep in the bowels of the earth. The traveller 
soon discovered that the mysterious sound had nev~ 
er been heard by the oldest inmates until the poem 
of " Marmion" appeared, in which the condemna- 
tion and the death of Constance in the dungeons 
of the Cathedral are so forcibly described. This 
is, however, a metaphysical source of mystery. 

In volcanic regions, as in that of the Solfatara, 
near Naples, these strange and subterranean sounds 
are not unfrequently heard ; and in the rocky and 
caverned coasts of our own island also, where dwell 
the unlettered and the superstitious, by whose wild 



154 ILLUSTRATION OF MYSTERIOUS SOUNDS. 

and romantic fancy these noises are readily magni- 
fied into the supernatural. 

Camden, in his " Britannia," informs us, "In a 
rock in the island of Barry, in Glamorganshire, 
there is a narrow chink or cleft, to which, if you 
put your ear, you shall perceive all such sorts of 
noises as you may fancy smiths at work under 
ground, strokes of hammers, blowing of bellows, 
grinding of tools." At Worm's Head, in the pen- 
insula of Gower, in Glamorganshire, these sounds 
are, even now, often heard ; and it requires but a 
moderate stretch of imagination to create all this 
cyclopean imagery, when the sea is rolling in cav- 
ities under our feet, and the tone of its voice is 
magnified by confinement and repercussion. From 
some such source probably sprung the fable of 
" the syrens," two solitary maidens, who, by their 
dulcet voices, so enchanted the navigators who 
sailed by their rocks, that they forgot home and 
the purpose of their voyage, and died of starvation. 
Ulysses, instructed by his mother Circe, broke the 
spell, and the ladies threw themselves into the sea 
with vexation. This fable, like many of the classic 
mysteries, may be thus topographically explained. 

In the Grand-duchy of Baden, near Friburg, is 
a very curious example of an iEolian lyre, con- 
structed, as the traditions of the mountains will 
have it, by the very genius loci himself. 

In a romantic chasm of these mountains most 
melodious sounds are sometimes heard from the 
top of fir-trees overhanging a waterfall. The cur- 
rent of air, ascending and descending through the 
chasm, receives a counter impulse from an abrupt 
angle of the rock, and, acting on the tops of the 
string-like branches of the trees, produces the soft 
tones of the iEolian harp, the effect of which is 
much enhanced by the gushing of the waterfall. 



ILLUSTRATION OF MYSTERIOUS SOUNDS. 155 

There may be in these natural sounds the source 
of many fables of the ancients ; the moaning of the 
wind among the branches of a pine-grove might 
be the wailing of a hamadryad. 

Baron Humboldt heard the strangest subterrane- 
an sounds among the granite rocks on the Orinoco ; 
and at the palace of Carnac, some of Napoleon's 
savans heard noises exactly resembling the break- 
ing of a string. It is curious that Pausanias ap- 
plies exactly this expression to the sounds of the 
Memnonian granite, the colossal head of Memnon, 
which was believed to speak at sunrise. He writes : 
" It emits sounds every morning at sunrise which 
can be compared only to that of the breaking of 
the string of a lyre." 

Juvenal has the same notion, but he has multi- 
plied the sounds. 

The mystery of Memnon may be readily ex- 
plained by the temperature and density of the 
external air differing from that within the crevices, 
and the effort of the current to promote an equilib- 
rium ; yet these simple sounds were, in course of 
time, warped into articulate syllables, and at length 
obtained the dignity of an oracular voice. And in 
these illustrations, fair Castaly, you have the clew 
to all the mysteries of demonia and fairy land. 

To these natural illusions let me add the tri- 
umphs of phonic mechanism and the peculiar fac- 
ulty of the ventriloquist, the secrets of which the 
science of Sir David Brewster has so clearly de- 
veloped. The wondrous heads of Memnon, and 
Orpheus, and iEsculapius, the machines of Al- 
bertus Magnus and Sylvester, are now held but as 
curious specimens of art, and are, indeed, eclipsed 
by the- speaking toys of Kratzenstein, and Kem- 
pelin, and Willis, and Savart, and the ingenious 
instruments of Wheatstone, 



156 ILLUSTRATION OF MYSTERIOUS SOUNDS, 

Of ventriloquism it is not my purpose to speak ; 
but there is a wonder of our time in the person of 
young Richmond, which, with many distinguished 
physiologists, I examined at the conversazione of 
Dr. E , in C street. 

When Richmond sat himself to perform, we 
heard a subdued murmur in his throat for about 
half a minute, when suddenly a sound issued of 
the most exquisite and perfect melody, closely re- 
sembling, but exceeding in delicacy, the finest 
musical box. The mouth was widely open, and 
the performance was one of considerable effort. 
The sounds were a mystery to us at the time, for 
they were perfectly unique, and are yet not satis- 
factorily explained. It is decided, however, by 
some, that the upper opening of the windpipe may 
be considered as a Jew's-harp, or iEolina, of very 
exquisite power, behind the cavity of the mouth, 
instead of being placed between the teeth. 

Astr. And thus concludes our lecture on spe- 
cial mechanics. 

Ev. I professed no more, Astrophel. It may be 

the privilege of the sacred poet to soar beyond the 

confines of our own planetary system : 

" Into the heav'n of heav'ns he has presumed, 
An earthly guest, and drawn empyreal air." - 

But the study of philosophy is nature and nature's 
hnoum laws. If we lean for one moment to the 
credence of a modern miracle, there is an end to 
our philosophy. Revealed truth, and the immate- 
rial nature of the mystical essence within us, we 
may not lightly discourse on. The sacred histo- 
ries of Holy "Writ, and the miracles recorded in 
its pages, the hand- writing in the hall of Belshaz- 
zar, the budding of Aaron's rod, the standing still 
of the sun upon Gibeon, and, above all, the mira- 
cles of the Redeemer, are of too holy a nature to 



FAIRY MYTHOLOGY. 157 

be submitted to the test of philosophical specula- 
tion ; they rest on the conviction of conscience 
and the heart, a proof far more sublime than may 
ever be elicited by the ingenuity of man, or the 
workings of his sovereign reason. 



FAIRY MYTHOLOGY. 

" I'll give thee fairies to attend on thee." 

Midsummer Night's Dream. 

Astr. Why so thoughtful, fair Castaly % I fear 
Evelyn has clipped your sylphid wings, and made 
a mortal of you. 

Cast. Your finger on your lips, Astrophel ; for 
the world, not a syllable of confession to Evelyn. 

I could think I heard the murmurs of a host of 
fairies streaming up to earth from elf-land, in fear 
of libels on their own imperial sovereignty by this 
matter-of-fact scholar. 

Astr. Why did we listen to his philosophy 1 
why not still believe the volumes of our antique 
legends, that those which tell the influence of fairies 
and demons on man's life have their source in the 
real history of a little world of creatures more ethe- 
real than ourselves % Perhaps even the bright 
thoughts of a poet's fancy are not his own creation. 

Cast. We must hear no more, although Evelyn 
will still convert syrens into rocks and trees, and 
make a monster out of a mist or a thunder-cloud. 
The sunlight is sleeping on Wyndcliff, and the 
breeze, creeping among the leaves, seems to me a 
symphony meet to conjure the phantoms of ro- 
mantic creatures. Evelyn is far away among the 
rocks ; let us steal the moment to revel in our 
dreams of faery. Even now, are we not in a realm 
of Peristan 1 Yon mossy carpet of emerald velvet, 
O 



158 FAIRY MYTHOLOGY. 

strewed with pearls and gold, may be the presence- 
chamber of Titania, and fays are dancing within 
their ring, which the silvery beech o'ercanopies so 
shadily ; and the chanting of their viral ays, or 
green-songs, comes like the humming of a zeph- 
yr's wing flitting o'er the mouth of a lily. Ariel 
is lying asleep in her cinque-spotted cowslip bell, 
and the fays are feeding on their fairy-bread, made 
of the pollen of the jasmine ; and Oberon quaffs 
to his queen the drops that hang on the purple lip 
of the violet, or glitter in the honeyed bell of the 
hyacinth, or that purest crystal of the lotus, that 
brings life to the fainting Indian in the desert, or 
the liquid treasure of the nepenthe. 

We pray you, Astrophel, recount to us, now we 
are in the humour, the infancy of bright and dark 
spirits, for you have dipped deep, I know, into the 
Samothracian mysteries. 

Astr. Know, then, that the birthtime of my- 
thology and romance was in the primeval ages of 
man. The ancient heathens believed in the legends 
of their deities, as we have credence in modem 
history and biography ; indeed, the rornance of 
the moderns was with the ancients truth. They 
had implicit faith in the presence of their gods, 
and that they might perchance meet them in the 
groves and hills, which were consecrated to their 
worship, and adorned with sculpture and idols in 
honour of the deities. Hence the profusion of 
their names and nature, recorded in the pages of 
the olden time, when the scribe traced his reed 
letter on the papyrus. 

From the climes of the sun came the Orient tales 
of genie, and deeves, and peris ; and of naiad, and 
nereid, and dryad, and hamadryad from Greece 
and Rome. In the Koran shone forth the prom- 
ised houris of Mohammed's paradise, and its mys- 



FAIRY MYTHOLOGY. 159 

teries were echoed to us from the lips and tables 
of pilgrims and crusaders, who had blazoned their 
red cross in the holy wars. Thus was romance 
cradled and bosomed in religion. 

From the legends of the East spring the fairy- 
romances of our own days. The Peri of Persia 
was the denizen of Peristan, as the Ginn of Ara- 
bia was of Ginnistan, and the Fairy of England of 
Fairy land ; and we have their synonymes in the 
Fata of Italy and the Daerga of northern Europe. 

These spirits of romance are almost innumer- 
able, for thus saith the " Golden Legend:" that 
" the air is full of sprites as the sonnebeams ben 
full of small motes, which is small dust or poudre." 

The alchymist Paracelsus asserts that the ele- 
ments were peopled with life, the air with sylphs 
and sylvains, the water with ondines, the earth with 
gnomes, and the fire with salamanders. And Mar- 
tin Luther coincides with these assertions ; nay, 
hath not Master Cross, of Bristol, illustrated the 
creed, and shown, by his galvanic power, an ani- 
mated atom starting forth, as if by magic, from a 
flint, a seeming inorganic mass ] 

The sagas, or historical records of Scandinavia, 
of the Celtic, Scaldic, and Runic mythology, assert 
that the duergas or dwarfs, which are the Runic 
fairies, sprang from the worms in the body of the 
giant Ymor, slain, according to the Edda, by Odin 
and his brother ; and Spenser has left a very inter- 
esting genealogical record of the faery brood in 
that romantic allegory of the Elizabethan age, the 
"Faery Queen." Elf, the man fashioned and in- 
spired by Prometheus, was wandering over the 
earth alone, and in the bosky groves of Adonis 
he discovered a lady of marvellous beauty — Fay. 
From this romantic pair sprang the mighty race of 
the fairies, and we have wondrous tales of the prow- 



160 FAIRY MYTHOLOGY. 

ess of their heroic princes. Elfiline threw a golden 
wall round the city of Cleopolis ; Elfine conquered 
the G-obbelines ; Elfant built Panthea of purest 
crystal ; Elfan slew the giant twins ; and Elfinor 
spanned the sea with a bridge of glass. 

Cast. Spenser, I presume, borrowed Ms ro- 
mance from Italy. We read that the rage and 
party spirit of the potent Guelphs and Ghibellines 
rankled even in their nurseries. The nurses were 
wont to frighten the children into obedience with 
these hated names, which, corrupted to the epithets 
of elf and goblin, were henceforth applied to fairies 
and phantoms. 

Astr. This story is itself a mere fiction. Ere 
the period of these feuds of party, the term Elfen 
(and Dance identifies this with the Teutonic Helfen) 
was a common epithet of the Saxon spirits ; Weld- 
elfen were their dryads, and Zeld-elfen their field 
fairies, &c. 

The American Indians, to this day, have faith in 
the presidencies of spirits over those lakes, trees, 
and mountains, and even fishes, birds, and beasts, 
which excel in magnitude. The Orient Indian, too, 
at this hour, peoples the forest with his gods ; and 
peacocks, and squirrels, and other wild creatures 
are thus profanely deified. 

The legends of later days have quaintly blended 
the classic with the fairy mythology. Hassenet tells 
us that Mercurius was called the Prince of Fairies, 
and Chaucer sings of Pluto, the King of Fayrie ; 
and, in the romance of the Nine Champions, Pro- 
serpine sits crowned among the fairies. The great 
zoologist, Pliny, writes, in his Natural History, that 
" you often encounter fairies that vanish away like 
fantasies." And Baxter believed that " fairies and 
goblins might be as common in the air as fishes in 
the sea." 



FAIRY MYTHOLOGY. 161 

As the Peri could not enter paradise in conse- 
quence of the errors of her "recreant race," so the 
elves could not enjoy eternity without marrying a 
Christian ; and on this plea they came up to the 
daughters of men : and we read in the tenets of 
the Cabala that by these earthly weddings they 
could enjoy the privileges and happiness of each 
other's nature. But these unnatural unions were 
not always happy. There is, in our old chronicles, 
a tradition of a marriage between one of the counts 
of Anjou and a fair demonia, which entailed mis- 
ery and commission of crime on the noble house 
of Plantagenet. 

Now there are appointed times when the influ- 
ence of the spirit fades for a season. It was the 
moment of the eclipse among the American In- 
dians and the African blacks ; in Ireland it is the 
feast of the Beltane ; in Scotland this immunity 
came over the mortal life on Hogmany, or New- 
year's Eve, and during the general assemblies of 
these mystic spirits of the world. 

In Britain it was on the eve of the first of May, 
the second of November, and on All- Souls' Day. 
At these times, indeed, they might be induced to 
divulge the secrets of their mysterious freema- 
sonry. 

In Germany on May-day, when the unearthly 
rendezvous was on the dark mountain of the Hartz, 
and on Halloween, in Caledonia, even the secrets 
of time and futurity were unfolded by the spirits 
to a mortal, if one were found so bold as to repair 
on these festivals to their unhallowed haunts. 

If a mortal enters the secret abodes of the Daoine 
Shi in Scotland, and anoints his eyes with their 
charmed ointment, the sfift of seeing that which is 
to all others invisible is imparted ; but this must 
be kept secret, for the Men of Peace will blind 
n 02 



162 ' FAIRY MYTHOLOGY. 

the second-sighted eye if once they are recognised 
on earth by a mortal. 

In the gloomy forests of Germany rose the le- 
gends of Kobolds, and Umbriels, and Wehrwolves, 
the Holts Konig, the Waldebach, the Reiberzahl, 
and the Sc7iattenman, the Hudekin, the Erl Konig, 
and the beautiful naiad, the Nixa. The devil him- 
self was believed to be a gnome king ; for when 
the Elector of Saxony offered Martin Luther the 
profit of a mine, he refused it, " lest, by accepting 
it, he should tempt the devil, who is lord of those 
subterraneous treasures, to tempt him." 

Then we have the Putseet, or Puck of the Sa- 
mogitae, on the Baltic ; the Biergen Trold, or Skoiv, 
of Iceland ; and those mermaids which gambol 
around the Faroe Islands. We read in the Danske 
Folksaga that these " merrows" cast their skins 
like the boa, and in that condition are changed into 
human beings till their scales are restored to them. 
And the Shetlanders implicitly believe that awful 
storms instantly aiise on the murder of one of 
these sea-maids. 

There was the Norse goddess Freya, which, 
like the Dragon of Wantley and the Caliban of 
the " still vexed Bermoothes," blasted the fair face 
of nature, and far eclipsed the giant serpent off 
Cape Saint Anne, or the kraken of Norway, and 
even that monstrous sea-snake, the jor?nungandz 
(so conspicuous among the wild romances of the 
Edda), whose coils entwined the globe. Thor an- 
gled for this snake with a bull's head, but it was 
not to be caught, being reserved for some splendid 
achievement in the grand conflict which is to her- 
ald the Ragnarockr, the twilight of the gods. 

Among the mountains of our own island we 
have a profuse legion. In Wales, the Tylwth Tag 
and the Pooka j and many a hollow in the mount- 



FAIRY MYTHOLOGY. 163 

ain, where these strange animals resort, is called 
Ctom Pooka ; and the wondrous cavern of the 
Melte\ in Breconshire, was believed to be haunted 
by this little pony. 

In Ireland they have a Mcrrow, the Runic Sea, 
or oigh-maid ; the Banshee, or fairy prophet ; the 
Fear-Dcarg, the Irish Puck ; the Clurricane, a 
sottish pigmy ; and the Pooke, the wild pony. 

Cast. These must have been a prolific as well as 
a wandering brood, for I also have seen many cav- 
erns in the rocky districts, called Poola Phouka, in 
which these mischievous little creatures concealed 
themselves. 

Astr. In Man there is a hill called the " Fairy 
Hill," a tumulus of the Danes, which is thought 
to be a nocturnal revel-place for the Man fairies 
which preside over their fisheries. 

Scotland was a fertile mother of monsters : the 
Ourisks or JJriskin, the goblin-satyrs or shaggy 
men ; the Broicnies ; the Kelpies, or river-demons ; 
the Bargheists ; the Red-cap ; the Daolne Shi, or 
Men of Peace ; the Glaslic, or noontide-hag, which 
haunted the district of Knoidart ; and the Lham- 
Dearg, or red hand, in the forests of Glenmore and 
Kothiemurchus ; the Bodach-Glas ; and the Pixies y 
or small gray men. 

Cast. There is an islet among the Scottish Heb- 
rides which is called the Isle of Pigmies ; and I 
remember a chapel there, in which very minute 
human bones were some time ago discovered. 
Think you, Astrophel, that these were the skele- 
tons of pixies 1 

Astr. I cannot think the notion irrational ; there 
are dwarfs and giants even in our days. The Bos- 
gis-men of the Cape, and the Patagonians of South 
America, prove the existence of beings of another 
stature, and, perchance, of another nature, in days 



164 FAIRY MYTHOLOGY. 

long agone. The Laplander and Bushman of the 
Cape are little more than three feet high ; and 
that there were giants, too, is proved by the fossil 
bones which have been found in the strata of our 
earth. 

Cast. Then we have really dwindled in our 
growth, and Adam was really a hundred and 
twenty-three feet nine inches high, and Eve a 
hundred and eighteen feet nine inches and three 
quarters, as we are solemnly informed by our pro- 
fane chronicles % Nay, even the story may be 
true of the Pict, who bit off the end of the mattock 
with which some slave of science was opening his 
coffin, and thundered forth this exclamation : "I 
see the degeneracy of your race by the smallness 
of your little finger." 

Ida. If Evelyn were here, he would ask why 
we have no skeletons of giants, as of lizards, in our 
secondary rocks ; and he would tell this learned 
Theban, Castaly, that Cuvier decided these fossils, 
which seemed to be the debris of a giant race, to 
be the bones of elephants. The legends of Athe- 
naeus are probably a fable, and the fossils of the 
pigmies were, I dare say, the petrified skeletons 
of " span-long, wee unchristen'd bairns." 

Your allusion to the brownies reminds me of 
the monstrous errors which have crept into our 
legends from the mingling of two stories, or the 
warping of plain facts in natural history. And, 
indeed, I interrupt you to recount, in proof of this, 
some fragments from " Surtees's Durham." 

" Every castle, tower, or manor-house has its 
visionary inhabitants. ' The Cauld Lad of Hilton' 
belongs to a very common and numerous class, the 
brownie or domestic spirit, and seems to have pos- 
sessed no very distinctive attributes. He was sel- 
dom seen, but was heard nightly by the servants 



FAIRY MYTHOLOGY. 165 

who slept in the great hall. If the kitchen had 
been left in perfect order, they heard him amusing 
himself by breaking plates and dishes, hurling the 
pewter in all directions, and throwing everything 
into confusion. If, on the contrary, the apartment 
had been left in disarray (a practice which the 
servants found it most prudent to adopt), the in- 
defatigable goblin arranged everything with the 
greatest precision. This poor esprit Jblet, whose 
pranks were at all times perfectly harmless, was 
at length banished from his haunts by the usual 
expedient of presenting him with a suit of clothes. 
A green cloak and hood were laid before the 
kitchen fire, and the domestics sat up watching at 
a prudent distance. At twelve o'clock the spirit 
glided gently in, stood by the glowing embers, and 
surveyed the garments provided for him very at- 
tentively, tried them on, and seemed delighted 
with his appearance, frisking about for some 
time, and cutting several summersets and gamba- 
dos, till, on hearing the first cock, he twitched his 
mantle tight about him, and disappeared with the 
usual valediction : 

" ' Here's a cloak, and here's a hood, 

The cauld lad of Hilton will do no more good/ " 

The genuine brownie, however, is supposed to 
be, ab origine, an unimbodied spirit ; but the boy 
of Hilton has, with an admixture of English super- 
stition, been identified with the apparition of an 
unfortunate domestic, whom one of the old chiefs 
of Hilton slew at some very distant period, in a 
moment of wrath or intemperance. The baron 
had, it seems, on an important occasion, ordered 
his horse, which was not brought out so soon as he 
expected. He went to the stable, found the boy 
loitering, and, seizing a hayfork, struck him, though 
not intentionally, a mortal blow. The story adds, 



166 FAIRY MYTHOLOGY. 

that he covered his victim with straw till night, and 
then threw him into a pond, where the skeleton of 
a boy was (in confirmation of the tale) discovered 
in the last baron's time. 

I am by no means clear that the story may not 
have its foundation in the fact recorded in the fol- 
lowing inquest : 

" Coram Johannem King, coron., Wardae de Ches- 

trae, apud Hilton, 3 Jul. 7 Jac. 1609." 

(And here follows a report in Latin.) 

Nevertheless, I strongly suspect that the un- 
housel'd spirit of Roger Skelton, whom in the hay- 
field the good Hilton ghosted, took the liberty of 
playing a few of those pranks which are said by 
writers of grave authority to be the peculiar priv- 
ilege of those spirits only who are shouldered un- 
timely by violence from their mortal tenements. 

" Lingering in anguish o'er his mangled clay, 
The melancholy shadow turned away, 
And follow'd through the twilight gray." 

A free pardon for the above manslaughter ap- 
pears on the rolls of Bishop James, dated the 6th 
of September, 1609. 

I will only add that, among the Harleian MSS., 
the same legend is told with some variations, in 
which this " cauld lad" is termed the " Pale Boy 
of Hilton." 

This confusion of our mythology is as conclusive 
of the fiction of all the mysterious legends of the 
moderns as the jumble which the classic poets have 
made of their monsters. If we read Lempriere, 
the genealogy of the classic monster is involved in 
a maze of impious confusion ; and the mythology 
of Chimera, and Echidna, and Typhon, Geryon, 
and Cerberus, and the Hydra and Bellerophon, and 
Ortha and the Sphinx, and the Nemcean Lion, and 
the Minotaur, and the demoniac records of their ori- 
gin, it is almost profanation even to reflect on. 



FAIRY MYTHOLOGY. 167 

But when Martianus Capella tells us that devils 
have aerial bodies, that they live and die, and yet, 
if cut asunder, soon reunite ; and when Bodine as- 
serts, in his " Solution of Natural Theology," that 
spirits and angels are globular, as being of the most 
perfect shape, I confess I feel more disposed to 
smile at their imposture than to frown, were it not 
for their utter worthlessness. 

Yet all the allegories which adorn our legends 
are not so remote from truth or nature. The vam- 
pires are said to have gloated over the sacrifices 
of human life, while the gouls and afrits, the hye- 
nas in human shape, not only fed on dead carcasses, 
but, by a special transmigration, took possession 
of a corpse. On this fable is founded the monstrous 
legend of " Assuet and Ajut." I confess it mon- 
strous ; but indeed there is little exaggeration even 
in these tales of horror, if we may believe for once 
Master Edmund Spenser, in that part of his record 
of the rebellion of Desmond, in Ireland, which 
treats of the Munster massacre : " Out of every 
corner of the woodes and glennes they came creep- 
ing forth upon their handes, for their legges could 
not bear them ; they looked like anatomies of death ; 
they spake like ghostes crying out of their graves ; 
they eat the dead carrions — happy were they could 
they find them — yea, and one another soon after, 
insomuch as the very carcases they spared not to 
scrape out of their graves." That episode, also, in 
the " Inferno" of Dante, in which Count Ugolino 
wears out days and nights in gnawing the scull of 
an enemy, may well seem a fiction ; but even this 
hellish repast is but a prototype of the savage rage* 
for scalping and cannibalism among the Indian 
hordes of America. 



168 DEMONOLOGY. 



DEMONOLOGY. 

" Be thy intents wicked or charitable, 
Thou com'st in such a questionable shape — " — Hamlet. 

Astr. Now from the holy records, from the creed 
of the Magus Zoroaster, from the Greek, and Ro- 
man, and other legends, how clear is the influence 
of ethereal beings, of angels and demons, on man's 
life, and of the imparted power of exorcism ! In 
allusion to this divine gift to Solomon, Josephus 
has the following story : " God also enabled him 
to learn that skill which expels demons, which is a 
science useful and sanative to men. And this meth- 
od is of great force unto this day, for I have seen 
a certain man of my own country, whose name was 
Eleazer, releasing people that were demoniacal in 
the presence of Vespasian, and his sons, and his 
captains, and the whole multitude of his soldiers. 
The manner of the cure was this : he put a ring, 
that had a root of one of those sorts mentioned by 
Solomon, to the nostrils of the demoniac, after which 
he drew out the demon through his nostrils ; and 
when the man fell down immediately, he adjured 
him to return into him no more, making still men- 
tion of Solomon, and reciting the incantations which 
he composed. And when Eleazer would persuade 
and demonstrate to the spectators that he had such 
a power, he set a little way off a cup or basin full 
of water, and commanded the demon, as he went 
out of the man, to overturn it, and thereby to let 
the spectators know that he had left the man." 

The gods of the Greeks and the Latins, the lares 
and lemures, or hearth- spirits, the pagan and the 
Christian elves, were ever held as delegated agents 
of the Deity, who worked, not by a fiat, but by an 
instrument. Such were the Cemies of the Ameri- 
can islanders, and the Kitchi and Matchi Manitou 



DEMONOLOGY. 169 

of the Indians ; and, if we consult Father Borri, 
we shall learn that in Cochin China Lucifer him- 
self promenaded the streets in human shape. 

Psellus records six kinds of devils ; and the ar- 
rangements of Agrippa and other theologians enu- 
merate nine sorts of evil spirits, as you may read 
in one of old Burton's eccentric chapters. 

The mythology of the Baghvat Geeta, the sa- 
cred record of the Hindoo theists, is based on the 
notion of good and evil spirits, the emblems of vir- 
tue and of vice under the will and power of Brah- 
ma. Indeed, the Hindoo mythology is but that of 
the classic in other words. Agnee, the god of fire ; 
Varoon, the god of the ocean ; Vayoo, the god of 
the wind ; and Cama, the god of love, are but 
other names for Jupiter, and Neptune, and iEolus, 
and Cupid. 

The creed of Zoroaster asserts a perpetual con- 
flict between the good and evil deity, the types of 
/ religious knowledge and ignorance. The southern 
Asiatics are people of good principle, and the North- 
ern nations people of evil principle. And why may 
not the Persian thus coincide with Bacon himself, 
who, in his book " De Dignitate," confesses his be- 
lief in good and bad spirits, in charms, and proph- 
ecies, and the varieties of natural magic. Or is it 
inconsistent that the Hindoos should incarnate the 
malignant disease, smallpox, in the person of the 
deity Mah-ry-umma^ of whose lethal influence they 
lived in abject fear. 

Ida. In the holy records, it is true, we read that 
demons were even permitted to enter the bodies of 
other beings, and that when they had so established 
a possession, by divine command they went out of 
those possessed, as, for sacred example, into the herd 
of the Gadarenes ; that they were also commission- 
ed, for the fulfilment of the inscrutable will of the 
P 



170 DEMONOLOGY. 

Creator, to try the endurance of Job, and even to 
tempt the divinity of the Saviour, and that they 
were the immediate cause of madness and other 
sad afflictions. 

I do fear, Astrophel, that there is much danger, 
now, in this imbodying of a demon, and that we 
too often model our modern principles on the proud 
presumption of still possessing that miraculous pow- 
er of exorcism. With sorrow may I confess, that 
the holy truths of Scripture, so clearly evincing a 
special purpose, should have been ever warped, by 
worse than inquisitorial bigotry, into the motive for 
cruelties unparalleled. From the Scripture histo- 
ries of demoniac possession have arisen the coercion 
and cruelties which once marked with an indelible 
stain the records of our own madhouses ; where 
chains and lashes, inflicted by the demons of sci- 
ence, have driven the moody wretch into a raving 
maniac, when a light hand and a smile would have 
brought back the angel reason to the mind. 

Impersonation is the grand source of many sim- 
ilar errors. The demon which, since the light of 
the Christian dispensation, has brooded in man's 
heart and mind, is his own base passion, which in- 
cites him to shut his eyes to this holy light, and fol- 
low deeds of evil, to be a slavish worshipper in the 
hall of Arimanes. With this profane homage, we 
court our evil passions to betray and destroy the 
soul. And this is the interpretation of an allegory 
in the profane legends of the Talmud, that Lilis, 
the wife of Adam, ere the creation of Eve, brought 
forth none but demons ; the origin, indeed, of moral 
evil. 

There are many popular stories which bear a 
moral to this end, that the evil spirit is powerless 
over the heart if it be not encouraged and invited ; 
and, alas! the alluring mask under which evil looks 



DEMONOLOGY. 171 

on us is often but too certain to charm us to its 
influence, or we are too thoughtless to beware 
the danger. Thus the disguised enchanter enters 
into the palace of the Sultan Mesnar (in " The 
Tales of the Genii"), and thus the gentle Christa- 
bel of Coleridge leads the false Geraldine over that 
threshold which she could not cross without the help 
of confiding and unsuspecting innocence. 

Cast. The crones of retired villages have not 
yet yielded their belief in fairy influence. 

Among the low Irish it is believed that (as the 
nympholepts of old who had looked upon Pan seal- 
ed an early doom) the paralytic is fairy-struck ; 
and superstition has inspired them with a belief in 
the influence of the evil eye or glamour ie, especially 
in the vicinity of Blackwater. 

I remember, when our wanderings among the 
Wicklow mountains led us through the dark glen 
of the I)argle, the implicit faith of the Irish women 
in the charm of amulets and talismans. Like the 
fabled glance of the basilisk, the evil eye is bestow- 
ed on some unhappy beings from their very birth ; 
nay, the spell infests the cabin in which they herd. 
To avert this fatal influence from the children, a 
charm is suspended around their necks, which, 
when blessed by the priest, is called a " gospel." 

When a happy or evil star shines at a birth, it is 
the eye of a cherub or a demon, smiling or frown- 
ing on the destiny of the babe ; and when happi- 
ness or misery predominates in a life, it is a min- 
ister of good or ill that blesses or inflicts. There 
is one beautiful scrap of this mythology — the thrill 
of holy joy which the Irish mother feels when her 
infant smiles in its sleep ; for she knows it is a holy 
angel whispering in its ear. 

In our own island they are often celebrated as 
the very pinks of hospitality. 



172 DEMONOLOGY, 

In Cornish history, we read how Anne Jeffries 
was fed for six months by the small green people. 
And in yonder forest of Dean (as writeth Gervase, 
the imperial chancellor, in his " Otia Imperialia"), 
" In a grovy lawn there is a little mount, rising in 
a point to the height of a man, on which knights 
and other hunters are used to ascend, when fatigued 
with heat and thirst, to seek some relief for their 
wants. The nature of the place and of the busi- 
ness is, however, such, that whoever ascends the 
mount must leave his companions and go quite 
alone. When alone, he was to say, as if speaking 
to some other person, ' I thirst,' and immediately 
there would appear a cup-bearer in an elegant 
dress, with a cheerful countenance, bearing in his 
outstretched hand a large horn, adorned with gold 
and gems, as was the custom among the most an- 
cient English. In the cup, nectar of an unknown 
but most delicious flavour was presented; and when 
it was drunk, all heat and weariness fled from the 
glowing body, so that one would be thought ready 
to undertake toil instead of having toiled. More- 
over, when the nectar was taken, the servant pre- 
sented a towel to the drinker to wipe his mouth 
with, and then, having performed his office, he wait- 
ed neither for recompense for his services, nor for 
questions, nor inquiry." 

This frequent and daily action had, for a very 
long period, of old times taken place among the 
ancient people, till one day a knight of that city, 
when out hunting, went thither^ and having called 
for drink, and gotten the horn, did not, as was the 
custom, and as in good manners he should have 
done, return it to the cup-bearer, but kept it for 
his own use. But the illustrious Earl of Glouces- 
ter, when he learned the truth of the matter, con- 
demned the robber to death, and presented the horn 



DEMONOLOGY. 173 

to the most excellent king, Henry the Elder, lest 
he should be thought to have approved of such 
wickedness if he had added the rapine of another 
to the store of his private property. 

But the fairies might rue their kindness if you 
frowned so darkly on them, Astrophel. They 
would fear the influence of your spells, for there is 
blight and mildew in that glance. At the banquet 
of the fairies, if the eye of the seer but look on them, 
the romance is instantly at an end : the nymphs of 
beauty are changed into withered carles and crones, 
and the splendour of elfin-land is turned to dust 
and ashes. 

Ida. As a set-off against the virtues of your fair- 
ies, Castaly, you forget there was a propensity to 
mischief. They were rather fond, like the Daoine 
Shi, of stealing unchristened babes, and of chop- 
ping and changing these innocents, thence called 
changelings. On this fable your own Shakspeare 
has wrought the quarrel of Oberon and Titania : 

" A lovely boy, stolen from an Indian king ; 
She never had so sweet a changeling." 

I am willing, dearest, that the poet shall make a 
good market of these fictions ; but superstitious ig- 
norance may make a sad and cruel work of it, even 
among your romantic Irish peasantry. 

A few months since, on the demesne of Hey wood 
(as we learn from the " Tipperary Constitution"), 
the death of a child, six years old, was accomplish- 
ed with a wantonness of purpose almost incredible. 
Little Mahony was afflicted with spinal disease, 
and, like many other deformed children, possessed 
the gift — in this case the fatal gift — of acute intel- 
lect. For this quality, it was decided that he was 
not the son of his reputed father, but a fairy change- 
ling. After a solemn convocation, it was decreed 
that the elfin should be scared away ; and the mode 
P2 



174 POETRY OF NATURE. 

of effecting this was by holding the child on a hot 
shovel, and then pumping cold water on his head ! 
This had the effect of extorting a confession of his 
imposture, and a promise to send back the real 
Johnny Mahony ; but, ere he could return to elf- 
land and perform this promise, he died. But who 
is he sitting at your ear, Castaly % 

Cast. Sir, is this fair 1 ? You have played the 
eavesdropper. Why come you here ] 

Ev. To counsel you to silence on these myster- 
ies, sweetest Castaly : remember the fate of Mas- 
ter Kirke of Aberfoyle for his dabbling in elfin 
matters, which you may read in Sir Walter's " De- 
monology." Yet I will not flout all your fairy 
legends ; there may be innocent illusions, that carry 
with them somewhat of morality and retribution — 
seeing that there are good and bad spirits, which 
reward and punish mortality. But, in sooth, I 
never think of fairy land without remembering that 
good Sir Walter, as sheriff of Selkirkshire, once 
took the deposition of a shepherd, who affirmed 
that he saw the good neighbours sitting under a 
hill-side, when, lo ! it was proved that these were 
the puppets of a showman, stolen and left there by 
some Scotch mechanics. And, better still, the story 
of the Mermaid of Caithness, as related to Sir 
Humphrey Davy, and recorded in his " Salmonia;" 
the mermaids, as I take it, being nearly allied to 
the Nereid, or Sea-fairy, and the reality of one 
about as true as that of the other. 

Nature is wild and beautiful enough without 
these false creations. Read her truth, fair lady, 
and leave the fables to the fairies. There is not a 
ripple or a stone that is not replete with scientific 
interest, and yields not a study that both ennobles 
and delights the mind. 

The doublings, or horseshoes^ of this Wye, or 



POETRY OF NATURE. 175 

Vaga, as the Romans named it, within its circle of 
rocks, so exquisitely fringed with green and purple 
lichens (like the Danube round the castle of Hay- 
enbach, in the gloomy gorge of Schlagen, or the 
Crook of Lime in Westmoreland, and many others), 
illustrate at once the nature of the stratification on 
the earth's surface ; even the varied tints of these 
mountain streams may read the student a practic 
lesson in geology. 

From the lime-rock springs the azure blue, as 
the Glaslyn stream at Beddgelert, the Rhone, and 
the Traun in Styria ; from the chalk ripples the 
gray water of the Dee and the Arve ; from the 
clay hills the stream comes down yellow, as " the 
Derwent's amber wave ;" and where the peat- 
mosses abound, especially in the autumnal flood, 
the stream is of a rich and dark sienna brown, as 
the Conway, and the Mawddach, in Merioneth ; 
or even of transparent black, as the Elain, which 
'flows down through the white schist rocks of Car- 
diganshire. 

Cast. And is there wisdom, Evelyn, in thus 

" Flying from Nature to study her laws, 
And dulling delight by exploring the cause ?" 

I do fear that this analytic study of nature destroys 
the romance of life which flings around us its rain- 
bow beauty. 

Oh for those halcyon days of infancy, when every 
thought was a promise ; when hope, the dream of 
waking men, was lost in its fulfilment; and even 
fear itself was a thrill of romance ! 

Behold yon silver moon ! it is to the poet's eye 
an orb of unsullied beauty, and the planets and 
their satellites glitter like diamond studs in the 
firmament. Yet shift but the lens of the star-gazer, 
and lo ! dark and murky spots instantly shadow 
over its purity ; nay, have I not read that one deep 



176 POETRY OF NATURE. 

astronomer, Fraiienhofer, has discovered mountains 
and cities ; and another, Sir John Herschel, the 
laying down of railroads in the moon ] So the 
optics of Gulliver magnified the court beauties of 
Brobdignag into monsters, and the auburn tresses 
of a maid of honour into a coil of dusty ropes ! 

Ev. A truce, fair Castaly. If science discovers 
defects, does it not unfold new beauties, a new 
world of animated atoms, endowed with faculties 
and passions as influential as our own ? Nay, 
science has thrown even a poetry around the blue 
mould of a cheese-crust ; and in the bloom of the 
peach the microscope has shown forth a treasury 
of flowers and gigantic forests, in the depths of 
which the roving animalcule finds as secure an 
ambush as the lion and the tiger within the gloomy 
jungles of Hindostan. In a drop of liquid crystal 
the water- wolf chases his wounded victim till it is 
changed to crimson with its blood. Ehrenberg has 
seen monads in fluid the 24,000th part of an inch 
in size, and in one drop of water 500,000,000 crea- 
tures — the population of the globe ! I hope, Cas- 
taly, you will not, like the Brahmin, break your 
microscope because it unfolds to you these won- 
ders of the water. 

Then, by the power of the telescope, we roam 

into other systems, 

" World beyond world in infinite extent, 
Profusely scattered o'er the blue expanse," 

and orbs so remote as to reduce to a mere span the 
distance between us and the Georgium Sidus, and 
revel in all the gorgeous splendour of rings, and 
moons, and nebulas, the poetry of heaven. 

Is there not an exquisite romance in the closing 
of the barometrical blossoms ; of the white convol- 
vulus, and the anagallis or scarlet pimpernel ; of 
the sunflower, and the leaves of the Dionoza and 
mimosa ? 



POETRY OF NATURE. 177 

Is there not poetry in the delicate nautilus, with 
its arms dropped for oars ; in the velella and pur- 
ple pliysalia, expanding their membranous sails ; 
and the beautiful fish-lizard, the Proteus of trans- 
parent alabaster, found in the wondrous cavern of 
Maddalena, among the Styrian mountains ; and 
even in the stalactites of Antiparos, as glittering 
as the gems and crystal pillars of Aladdin's palace % 
Are not these more beautiful because they are true, 
and better to be read than all the impersonations 
of mythology, or that voluptuous romance which 
would endow a flower with the fervour of sense 
and passion ] 

Ida. I have ever wondered that a scholar like 
Darwin should have so wasted time with his 
V Loves of the Plants ;" for the study of nature 
and the discoveries of science are ever vain if they 
lift not the heart in adoration. The insect, that 
fans the sunbeam with its golden wing, or even the 
flower that opes its dewy eyes to the light, are un- 
conscious worshippers of the Divine Being. 

The Epicurean, who weeps for a decaying body, 
but mourns not for a lost soul, will enjoy these 
beauties of nature with a heart faithful to his creed, 
that pleasure is the only good; but the Christian 
feels that, when he chips a stone or culls a flower, 
he touches that which comes fresh from the hand 
of its Creator. 

How full is nature, too, of mute instruction ! the 
simplest incident is a lesson, if we will but learn it. 
You see that fading blossom floating on the surface 
of the stream. That inanimate type of decaying 
beauty shows, to the reflective mind, that even in 
the summer of life the flower of existence will lose 
its youthful lustre, and float down the stream of 
time into the depths of eternity. 

But tell me, Evelyn, may not the influence of 
12 



178 POETRY OF NATURE. 

that science that magnifies the lights of heaven 
(created to rule day and night) into habitable 
worlds, weaken the influence of faith in holy writ 1 

May we not fear that, like the Promethean Pre- 
adamites of Shelley, the Cain of Byron, the fabled 
beings of Ovid, and the mythology of Milton, will 
be the vaunted discoveries of the geologist, in con- 
troversion of the Mosaic records, of the creation, 
and the deluge ; proving the wisdom of Bacon, 
that to associate natural philosophy with sacred 
cosmogony will lead to heretical opinions ] In- 
deed, I remember in the Zendavesta of Zoroaster, 
the chronicle of the Magian religion (supposed to 
be a piracy from the book of Genesis), the sun is 
created hefore light. 

Ev. Fear not this, fair Ida. Rather believe, 
with Bouget, that philosophy and natural theology 
mutually confirm each other. The latter teaches us 
that which it is our duty to believe ; the former, to 
believe more firmly. And Lord Bacon himself, in 
his " Cogitata et Visa," deems natural philosophy 
"the surest antidote of superstition, and the food 
of religious faith." 

The belief in existence of a preadamite world 
presumes not to controvert the Mosaic record of 
the development of the globe, the creation of Adam, 
or the fall of man. Modern geology has peopled 
this preadamite world with saurians, or lizards, a 
race of beings not concerned in the punishment of 
that delinquency. Of the existence of these crea- 
tures there is no doubt ; the discovery of their fossil 
remains, without a vestige of the human skeleton, 
marks the period of their destruction, and that the 
crust of the globe enveloping these relics might 
have been reduced to that chaos when " the earth 
was without form and void, and darkness was upon 
the face of the deep," and from which our beauti- 
ful world was fashioned by a fiat. 



NATURE OF SOUL AND MIND. 179 

The truth of holy Scripture is too clear even to 
be disturbed by a sophist. You may recollect that 
Julian the apostate contemplated the reconstruc- 
tion of the Temple of Jerusalem, in order to con- 
fute the prophecies ; but Julian failed, and misfor- 
tune was the lot of all who were leagued in the 
impiety. 

As to natural laws, think me not so profane as to 
cite such as the superstitious alchymist, Paracelsus, 
in proof of their use in the working of a miracle ; 
who says that " devils and witches raise storms by 
throwing up alum and saltpetre into the air, which 
comes down as rain-drops !" 

And it were reversing this solemn argument 
were I to confess the doctrines of the Illuminaten, 
who, taught by Jacob Boehmen, and the mysticisms 
of his " Theosophia Revelata," explained all na- 
ture's laws by warping texts of Scripture to their 
purpose. Yet it is clear that even the miracles of 
the prophets may have been sometimes influenced 
by established laws. Elisha raised the Shunamite's 
son by placing mouth to mouth, as if by inhalation. 

Believe not, then, fair Ida, that philosophy is set 
in array against religion when the student of nature 
endeavours to explain her phenomena by physical 
laws, for those laws the great Creator himself hath 
made 



NATURE OF SOUL AND MIND. 

" And for my soul, what can it do for that, 
Being a thing immortal 1" — Hamlet. 

Cast. We have risen with the lark to salute you, 
Astrophel. And you have really slept in Tintern 
Abbey 1 Yet not alone ; " I see Queen Mab hath 
been with you," and brushed you with her wing as 
you lay asleep. 



180 NATURE OF SOUL AND MIND. 

Astr. Throughout the livelong night, sweet 
Castaly, I have revelled in a world of dreams. 
My couch, and pillow were the green grass turf. 
No wonder that tales of the times of old should 
crowd on my memory, that elfin lips should whis- 
per in my ear — 

Cast. " The soft, exquisite music of a dream." 

Ida. Talk not of dreams so lightly, dear Castaly; 
the visions of sleep are among the most divine mys- 
teries of our nature : these transient flights of the 
spirit in a dream, unfettered as they seem by the 
will, are, to my own mind, among the most exalted 
proofs of its immortality. Is it not so, Evelyn 1 

Ev. The mystery which you have glanced at, Ida, 
Is the most sublime subject in metaphysics. Yet, 
in our analysis of the phenomena of intellect, it is 
our duty to discard, with reverential awe, many of 
the notions of the pseudo psychologists in allusion to 
that self-evident truth, that requires not the support 
of such arguments. 

In tracing the mystery of a dream to its associ- 
ation with our immortal essence, reason will at 
length be involved in a maze of conjecture. True 
philosophy will never presume to explain the mys- 
tical union of spirit and of flesh ; she would be be- 
wildered even in their definitions, and would in- 
cur some peril of forming unhallowed conclusions. 
Even the nature of the rational soul will involve 
him in endless conjecture, whether it be fire, as 
Zeno believed ; or number, according to Xenocra- 
tes ; or harmony, according to Aristoxenus ; or the 
lucid fire — the Creator of all things of the Chalde- 
an astrologers. 

He who aspires to a solution of the mystery may 
wear out his brain in the struggle, as Philetas work- 
ed himself to death in a vain attempt to solve the 
celebrated " Pseudoraenos," the paradox of the 



NATURE OF SOUL AND MIND. 181 

Stoics ; or, like the gloomy students of the German 
school, he might conclude his researches with a 
question like this rhapsody — unanswerable. 

" But thou, my spirit, thou that knowest this, that 
speakest to thyself, what art thou 1 what wast thou 
ere this clay coat was cut for thee ] and what wilt 
thou be when this rain-coat, this sleeping-frock, fall 
off thee like a garment torn to pieces 1 Whence 
comest thou] where goest thou] Ah! where from 
and to, where darkness is before and behind thee 1 ? 
Oh ye unclothed, ye naked spirits, hear this solilo- 
quy, this soul-speech. Know ye that ye be 1 Know 
ye that, ye were, that ye are as we are or otherwise, 
in eternity ] Do ye work within us when a holy 
thrilling darts through us like lightning, where not 
the skin trembles, but the soul within us] Tell us, 
oh tell us, what, then, is death]" 

Now, if we reflect on the psychology of the 
Greeks, can we discern their distinctions of vovc, 
Ttvevfia, ipvx?], oojfia, of soul or spirit — of spiritual 
body, or of idol and of earthly body ; or of dvfioc, 
ipvX 7 ], and vovc, ipvx 7 ], and so forth ] 

This fine distinction may be reduced to one sim- 
ple proposition : that soul and mind are the same, 
under different combinations : mind is soul evin- 
ced through the medium of the brain ; soul is mind 
emancipated from matter. This principle, if es- 
tablished, might associate the anomalies of many 
sophists ; the existence of two minds, the sensitive 
and intellectual, taught by the Alexandrian philos- 
ophers, or the tenets of Bishop Horsley, in his ser- 
mon before the Humane Society, the separation of 
the life of intellect from animal life ; and it might 
reconcile the abstract reasoning of medical philos- 
ophy with the pure but misdirected arguments of 
the theological critic. 

We believe the spirit to be the essence of life 

Q 



182 NATURE OF SOUL AND MIND. 

and immortality ; and it signifies not whether our 
words are those of Stahl, that it presided over the 
animal body ; or those of Galen and Aristotle, that 
it directed the function of life. It is enough that 
we recognise the ttvotj ^(orjc, or that breath of life 
which the Creator breathed into none but man; and 
the eifC(*)v Qsov 1 the image of God, in which he was 
created. In this one proposition all the points of 
this awful question are comprehended. And it is 
on this combined nature that we must reason ere 
we discourse on sleep and dreams. 

Cast. I condole with you, Astrophel ; you must 
forget the splendour of your dreams, and listen to 
their dull philosophy. 

Astr. we may, indeed, sympathize with each 
other, Castaly ; we are threatened with another 
abstruse exposition of the mind, although we are 
already sated with the contrasted hypotheses of our 
deepest philosophers : the cogitation or self-reason- 
ing of Descartes (the essence of whose " Princip- 
ia" was " Cogito, ergo sum ;" and it is an adoption 
of Milton's Adam, " That I am, I know, because 1 
think ; forgetting that the very ego which thinks is a 
proof of prior existence) and of Malebranche, who 
believed they existed because they thought; the ab- 
stract spiritualism of Berkley, who believed he ex- 
isted merely because others thought of him ; the 
consciousness of Locke ; the idealism of Hume ; 
the material psychology of Paley ; the mental corpo- 
reality of Priestley; and the absolute nonentity of 
Pyrrho. 

Ev. I leave these hypotheses to speak for them- 
selves, Astrophel ; my own discourse will be wea- 
rying enough without them. 

Over the intricate philosophy of mind Creative 
Wisdom has thrown a veil, which we can never 
hope to draw aside. True, the beautiful mecha- 



NATURE OF SOUL AND MIND. 183 

nism of its organ, the brain, is apparent ; and we 
can draw some analogies from inspection of the 
brain of a brute, and its progressive development 
in fcetal life, in reference to comparative simplicity 
and complexity ; but its phenomena are not, like 
most of the organic functions of the body, demon- 
strable. 

Now, although we know not the ?node of this 
mutual influence, the seat of mind is a subject of 
almost universal belief; not that Aristotle, and 
iEtius, and John Locke are our oracles on this 
point, although they have even identified the spot, 
terming the ventricles the mind's presence-cham- 
ber, while Descartes decided on the pineal gland. 
It is, however, into the brain that the nerves of all 
the senses enter, or from which they emanate : the 
senses constitute the media by which the mind 
gains its knowledge of the world, and therefore 
we regard the brain as its seat. 

We believe that the mind may possess Jive fac- 
ulties — perception, association, memory, imagina- 
tion, and judgment, and their focus, or concentra- 
tion, is in the brain. We may argue long on the 
earthly nature of mind contrasted with that of mat- 
ter, yet, in the end, we commonly thus define it : 
a combination of faculties, and their sympathy with 
the senses. 

That to different parts of this organ are allotted 
different functions, cannot be doubted, when we 
look at its varied structure, its intricate divisions, 
its eccentric yet uniform cavities, its delicate and 
almost invisible membranes ; and, indeed, physio- 
logical experiments are proof of it. 

Astr. Then there is some truth in the whimsi- 
cal localities in the " Anatomy of Melancholy," 
and the pictures of the tenants and apartments of 
the brain in the ingenious romance of the " Purple 
Island" of Fletcher. 



184 NATURE OF SOUL AND MIND. 

Ev. Although I grant that these eccentric wri- 
ters evince much reading, I am not sure that their 
impersonations (like the " Polyolbion" of Drayton) 
do not tend to confuse rather than elucidate a nat- 
ural subject. 

Of a plurality of organs in the brain I have been 
convinced, even from my own knowledge and dis- 
sections. I have seen that very considerable por- 
tions of the cerebrum may be removed, the individ- 
ual still existing. The vital functions may con- 
tinue, the animal functions are deranged or lost. 
The most extensive injuries of the brain, too, are 
often discovered, which were not even suspected ; 
and the converse of this is often observed, the dis- 
eases of the brain being commonly found in an in- 
verse ratio to the severity of the symptoms. When 
chronic tumours and cysts of water are gradually 
formed, the extreme danger is averted by the bal- 
ancing power of the circulation of the brain's blood, 
without which its incompressibility would subject 
it to constant injury. 

In tubercles of the brain it is curious that memory 
is the faculty chiefly influenced ; it is sometimes 
rendered dull, while the fancy is vivid — often more 
perfect and retentive. 

Brain, however, can no more be considered as 
mind itself than retina sight, or than the sealing- 
wax can be identical with the electricity residing 
in it ; for if we look at the brain of a brute, we 
see how closely it resembles our own ; then, if we 
reflect on human intellect and brute instinct, we 
must all believe at once that there is some diviner 
thing breathed into us than the anima brutorum of 
Aristotle — something more than the mere vitality, 

" Spiritus intus alit, totamque infusa per artus 
Mens agitat molem." 

Brain is therefore the habitat of mind, the work- 



NATURE OF SOUL AND MIND. 185 

ings of which cannot be indicated without it ; for 
as the material world would be intact without a 
sense, so there can be no mortal evidence of mind 
without a brain, which is, indeed, the sense of the 
spirit. Thus, without adopting the creed of the 
Hyloist, the moderate materialist — that the mind 
cannot have, during the life of the body, even a 
momentary existence independent of matter — I 
believe that, when this matter is in a state of re- 
pose, mind is perfectly passive to our cognizance. 

Ida. It is with diffidence, Evelyn, that I enter 
this arena with a physician learned in the body ; 
but is there no danger in this doctrine ] does it not 
imply the office of a gland, that brain is the origin 
of soul, and that its function was the secretion of 
thought ? 

Ev. Such is the timid error of the mere meta- 
physician, Ida. There is no such danger ; for, 
remember, if there be secretion, it is the soul which 
directs. Many a thought is referred to things 
which we cannot bring into consciousness, except 
by the brain. 

Dr. Gall writes of a gentleman whose forehead 
was far more elevated on the right side than the 
left, and he deeply regretted that with this left 
side he could never think ; and Spurzheim of an 
Irish gentleman, who has the left side of the fore- 
head the least developed by four lines ; he, also, 
could not think with that side, as, indeed, I have 
before hinted. 

I may tell you the brain is double, and one healthy 
hemisphere is sufficient as the organ of mind, if 
pain or encroachment of the opposite, when dis- 
eased, does not destroy life, and this especially 
when it is a chronic change, or exists from birth ; 
so that I have often seen one hemisphere of the 
brain a pulpy bag of water, and yet vitality and 
0,2 



186 NATURE OF SOUL AND MIND. 

many signs of intellect may still exist ; nay, even 
if the ivholc brain be reduced to one medullary 
bag, animal life shall for some time be preserved. 

To oppose this blending of mind and matter, 
Lord Brougham (in his Natural Theology) likens 
the marble statue hewn into beauty to the perfect 
arrangement of organization in a being. While I 
admire the idea, I may observe that he forgets this 
truth — that the maker of the one was a mere stat- 
uary, without even the fabulous power of Prome- 
theus, or Pygmalion, or Frankenstein ; the other, 
the Creator of all things, who breathed a breath of 
life into the shape he had made fitted to receive it. 
My lord thus halts at the threshold of discovery : 
mind is not the product of organization, but it works 
by and through it; and therefore, for its earthly 
uses, cannot be independent of the qualities of 
matter. We may as well agree with Plato in en- 
dowing the soul with " a plastic power to fashion 
a body for itself, to enter a shape and make it a 
body living." I remember Plutarch (in his Quaest. 
Platon.) makes him say that the soul is older than 
the body, and the source of its existence, and that 
the intellect is in this soul. But where is the sa- 
cred evidence of this ] for, even in our antenatal 
state, we live, and yet there is probably no con- 
sciousness ; there is vitality, at least, without the 
consciousness of an intellect. 

Astr. As the creation of light was before that of 
the sun, its reservoir, so the creation of the soul 
might be before the brain, in which the Creator sub- 
sequently placed it. 

Ev. For this there is sacred evidence, Astrophel. 
There was light ere the sun was created as its res- 
ervoir ; but the soul was breathed into the body, 
which was already then created. 

Astr. This is a specimen of your special plead- 



NATURE OF SOUL AND MIND. 187 

ing, Evelyn, allied to that perilous error of Priest- 
ley, that supposed function and structure to be iden- 
tical, because they are influenced by the same dis- 
ease, and seem to live and die, and flourish and 
decay together. Democritus also has written his 
belief that, " as the smell of a rose exists in the 
bloom, and fades as that dies, so the soul of an ani- 
mal is born with its birth, and dies with its death." 
You have conceded to me (and we must all be con- 
scious of) the great difficulty of conceiving the na- 
ture of spirit ; but if we are required to prove its 
existence, we may answer, by analogy, that we 
cannot always palpably prove the existence of mat- 
ter, although we know it to exist. The electric 
fluid may remain for an indefinite period invisible, 
nay, may never meet the sight; it may even traverse 
a space without any evidence but that of its won- 
derful influence, and at length be collected in a jar. 

As light, existing in remote stars, has not yet 
reached our earth, so the electricity is now residing 
in myriads of bodies which will never be elicited ; 
and thus (if I may extend the simile) the principle 
of life, whatever it be, may have an independent 
existence during life, may leave the body and yet 
not perish. Is not this a fine illustration of the liv- 
ing of the soul without the body ] for here even a 
grosser matter, yet invisible, is evinced by its pas- 
sage from one thing to another, although it is inert 
when involved in the substance. 

Ida. May I not fear that the errors of philosophy, 
grounded on the difficulty of conceiving the nature 
of a self-existent spirit, will not stop until they 
lapse into the belief of annihilation 1 

For there are many suspicious sentiments even 
in the pages of well-meaning writers ; such are the 
dangerous sentiments which Boswell has ascribed 
to Miss Seward : " There is one mode of the fear 



188 NATURE OF SOUL AND MIND. 

of death which is certainly absurd, and that is the 
dread of annihilation, which is only a pleasing sleep 
without a dream." 

There may be nothing terrible in the condition 
of annihilation, yet the moral effect is deplorable ; 
indeed, to doubt the eternal existence is to argue 
that man's life is but a plaything of the Deity. 
The notion of annihilation is so abhorrent, that he 
who believes it dooms himself, indeed, to a miser- 
able existence ; for the crowning solace of a Chris- 
tian life is holy hope, and belief in the priceless gift 
of immortality. 

" Know'st thou th' importance of a soul immmortal ? 
Behold this midnight glory — worlds on worlds ! 
Amazing pomp : redouble this amaze ! 
Ten thousand add ; and twice ten thousand more ; 
Then weigh the whole ; one soul outweighs them all, 
And calls th' astonishing magnificence 
Of unintelligent creation poor." 

Would that Priestley had read wisely that pro- 
phetic truth in Ecclesiastes : " Then shall the dust 
return to the earth as it was, and the spirit shall 
return unto God who gave it." 

Ev. I do not approve his latitude of thought, yet 
it were severe to think this, even of Priestley, mere- 
ly because he disbelieved separate spiritual exist- 
ence; for Aristotle also asserts that "the soul could 
not exist without the body^ and yet that it was not 
the body, but a part of it." Zeno and the Stoics 
termed that which was called a spirit material ; 
and not only Ray and Derham, but even Paley and 
Johnson, disbelieved the separate existence. The 
archdeacon's opinion that we should have a sub* 
stantial resurrection is founded on New Testa- 
ment evidence, and expressed in his discourse on 
a future state. The apostle's simile of the wheat 
implies a death of the grain : it dies, but there is 
no remodelling, for it is the germ that lives and 



NATURE OF SOUL AND MIND. 189 

grows ; so, although the body may not be restored, 
j there is a development of its germ in the transit or 
/ resurrection of its spirit. The sage thought also 
/ the simile of St. Paul should be taken literally, and 
not figuratively ; and yet he qualifies it thus: "We 
see that it is not to be the same body, for the Scrip- 
ture uses the illustration of grain sown (which in 
its exact sense implies an offspring, and not a res- 
urrection), and we know that the grain which grows 
is not the same with what is sown. You cannot 
suppose that we shall rise with a diseased body ; it 
is enough if there be such a sameness as to distin- 
guish identity of person." 

Blumenbach believed that when the soul revived 
after death, the brain would equally revive ; and 
there is, indeed, nothing irrational in all this, for 
death is, even to our senses, not an annihilation, 
but only a new combination of matter. The Greek 
skeptics thought that the teeth would remain per- 
fect, if all else was decomposed and lost ; and the 
rabbins conferred this perpetuity on one bone of 
the spinal column, which they called LUZ. These 
strange notions of the mystic union may explain to 
us that diversity of custom, in various nations, as to 
the disposal of the dead. While the Irish papists, 
with a superstitious reverence for inanimate clay, 
celebrate their wakes with rites often as licentious 
as they are profane, the cannibal Calatice thought 
it more respectful to eat the bodies of their depart- 
ed friends — at least so writes Herodotus ; and the 
filial love of other Indian tribes invites the children 
to strangle their aged parents as they sit in their 
fresh-made graves. 

f It is certainly more consolatory to associate our 
thoughts with the immortal part of a lost friend ; 
to believe the spirit to be in celestial keeping, and 
that it still hovers around us. The collapse and 



190 NATURE OF SOUL AND MIND. 

change of features prove that the body is then but 
as the dust from which it was first formed. I would 
not wish, like Socrates, to have my limbs scattered 
over the earth, because 

" Coelo tegitur qui non habet urnam ;" 

but, as the body must be consumed, were it not 
better and safer, as the Greeks did, to burn the 
dead — to resolve the corpse, as soon as possible, into 
its constituent elements. I shall ever remember 
with horror the scenes which I witnessed in Na- 
ples, when a pile of bodies, collected from the chap- 
els by the dead-carts, which go round the city at 
night, was thrown by irreverent hands into the pub- 
lic cemetery of the Campo Santo. 

The fiat of the Creator may at once produce a 
reconstruction of the body, however widely scatter- 
ed its particles, and the return of the soul to the 
brain, from which it had once departed ; but is it 
not somewhat irrational to think that we should 
again be endowed with organs, without the func- 
tions and passions to which they are subservient ? 

Ida. It may be a bliss to gaze even on the shad 
ows of those we love. There is a beautiful alle 
gory of this solemn question told in the " Specta- 
tor/' which, as Addison approves, it cannot be 
profanation to admire. It is the Indian legend ot 
" Marraton and Yaratilda," in which the devoted 
husband comes unawares on Paradise, and sees the 
shadowy forms of his wife and children without 
their substance. The story exquisitely blends the 
fond wish of Marraton to die, that he may be again 
admitted to the holy communion of those so fondly 
loved ; for Paradise is painted in the mind's eye 
even of the heathen, although, in his dearth of rev- 
elation, he associates the joys of his elysium with 
the sensual pleasures of terrestrial life. The In- 



NATURE OF SOUL AND MIND. 191 

dian dreams of his dogs, believing that the greatest 
hunters shall be in the highest favour with Brah- 
ma ; the proselytes of the Prophet die in a vision 
of their houri's beauty ; and the warriors of Odin 
already drink the honey-water from the sculls of 
their enemies, served up to them by the beautiful 
" Valkhas" of the "Valhalla." Thus even the 
creed of infidels is not atheism. What thinks Ev- 
elyn ] 

Ev. As you do, Ida. As to the atheist, one, 
perchance, may have lived, if we rightly interpret 
the sentiments of Diogenes, and Bion, and Lucian, 
and Voltaire, but I believe one never died. My 
solemn duty has summoned me to the deathbed of 
more than one reputed infidel, who have in health 
reasoned with fluency and splendour, and have 
penned abstruse theses on life and the world's cre- 
ation. But when danger lay in their path of life, 
their stoic heroism fled, and left them abject cow- 
ards. They looked not even on the lightning's 
flash without trembling, and the vision of death 
was a sting to the conscience. I have seen many 
a deathbed like that of Beaufort, who made " no 
signal of his hope," not because he disbelieved a 
God, but because a conviction of his sin left him 
without a hope and faith in the promises. 

Of course there cannot be a Euthanasia where 
irreligion has marked a life, but, believe me, there 
would be no fear of death in an atheist. 

Astr. The mythologist and pagan may cite their 
tables, and worship their idols in the recesses of 
their pagodas and choultries, but some idea of the 
Deity has been unfolded to the mind of all. Even 
the Eastern princes have had some glimpses of 
the true faith, and shahs and caliphs were once 
engaged in building their Nestorine or Christian 
churches. 



192 NATURE OP SOUL AND MIND. 

The profane Chinese has, it is true, called his 
realm the celestial empire; Fohi, who is believed 
to have reigned three thousand years before Christ, 
established his " Iconolatria," or "idolatry," and 
Si Lao Kiun struck at the establishment of polythe- 
ism, but the purer theology of Confucius prevailed 
over his rival. 

The Deity, indeed, is the essence of every creed, 
for all believe in a great spirit as well as an im- 
mortal mind and a paradise. Like the reasonings 
of natural philosophy, our notions and epithets of 
the great Creator certainly differ, but in all there 
is faith in his perfection. Xam Ti is the great 
spirit of the Chinese, as Woden is the god of the 
Gothic races, and Brahma, or Alia, or the Kitchi 
Manitou, or even the sun, the source of light, and 
heat, and joy to the creation, are the deities of 
other nations. Nor may we wonder more that the 
Ghebir, and the Peruvian, and the Natchez should 
worship their orb of fire, than that the Irish should, 
on the morning of their Beltane, light their peat- 
fires to the sun. 

The doctrines of the Brahmins all attest their 
creed of theism, if we interpret aright the evidence 
of the learned Pundits of Benares, especially in 
the Gentoo code, and the records of AbulFazel in 
the " Baghvat Geeta," an episode in the poem of 
the " Mahabarat," written to prove the unity. The 
devout Christian will deem this creed a woful er- 
ror, but he will confess his admiration of their sub- 
lime notion of the divine attribute, which Colonel 
Dow has thus imparted to us : " As God is imma- 
terial, he is above all conception ; as he is invisi- 
ble, he can have no form ; but, from what we be- 
hold of his works, we may conclude that he is 
eternal, omnipotent, knowing all things, and pres- 
ent everywhere." 



NATURE OF SOUL AND MIND. 193 

I will grant that the Oriental notions of cosmog- 
ony, or the creation of the world, are a blot on 
their scripture page : because the pagan theolo- 
gians were shorn of the light of Christianity, they 
were prone to refer creation to natural causes 
within their own comprehension, and their ideas 
were fabulous and impure. Thus, among the Hin- 
doos and Egyptians, there is a mass of obscenity 
adduced to account for the development of the 
globe, in the associations of Vishnu, and Siva, and 
Osiris, and Isis ; and the temples of Elephanta 
and Elora are adorned with symbolic paintings of 
this incarnation of Vishnu. Yet, with all this error, 
there is in the " Vedas," or Hindoo scriptures, a 
not re'mote analogy to the Bible itself ; and, grant- 
ing that the cosmogony of Phoenicia is little more 
than a mysterious romance, yet whether the great 
cause be the demiurgic spirit uniting with desire, 
or the being " That" of the Hindoos, the essence 
of all these mysteries still combines the grand 
scheme of the creation — the formation of a beauti- 
ful world from a chaos of wide and dark waters. 

Ida. You are wandering very far eastward, As- 
trophel : I will propose this question to Evelyn. 

If it is so evident that the brain and mind, al- 
though not identical, exist in a most intimate union, 
may we not undervalue their relative influence by 
adducing the energy of intellect and brilliancy of 
conception possessed by many in advanced life ? 
Remember the green old age of Plato, and Cicero, 
and Newton, and Johnson, and, above all, Goethe, 
whose last work was brilliant as his first. And all 
this coincident with that love of Infinite Wisdom 
that exists (as we read in the " Consolations of a 
Philosopher"), "even in the imperfect life which 
belongs to the earth, increases with age, outlives the 
perfection of the corporeal faculties, and, at the mo- 
13 R 



194 NATURE OF SOUL AND MIND. 

ment of death, is felt by the conscious being." Does 
this imply decay 1 

Ev. The retentive powers of old age are the ex- 
ception to a rule which the ultra spiritualist as- 
sumes as a general rule, in attempting to disprove 
the growth and decay of mind, according to the 
age of the body. But as lives are of different du- 
ration, and constitutions vary, so may mental poivers 
indicate different degrees of vigour. If mind in- 
creases, no doubt it decreases ; and I have known 
many who retain every faculty but memory, which 
is the first to decay and indicate failing power ; 
and so also is it with idiots, in whose memory, 
usually, the greatest defects appear ; the faculty 
of counting numbers reaches only to three, and of 
letters to C, the third letter in the alphabet. 

Ida will grant that there is no more impressive 
lesson of humility than the dwindling and decay 
of genius, when, in the words of the Athenian mis- 
anthrope, 

" Nature, as it grows again towards earth, 
Is fashion'd for the journey, dull and heavy." 

Reflect on the painful end of Sheridan and other 
brilliant wits of their day ; that 

" From Marlborough's eyes the streams of dotage flow, 
And Swift expires a driveller and a show ;" 

and we may almost wish that biography should 
begin at each end, and finish in the middle, or ze- 
nith of a life. 

Ida. If the fact be so, I grant the lesson to our 
pride, Evelyn ; and we may dwell with fervent 
admiration on the divinity of that mind which can 
ennoble and consecrate our body, so fraught as it 
is with basest passions, and so decayable withal. 



NATURE OF SLEEP. 195 



NATURE OF SLEEP. 

"Sleep, gentle sleep! 
Nature's soft nurse." — Henry IV., Part ii. 

Ida. I begin to perceive the importance of this 
digression on the nature of mind. You wish us to 
believe there is a temporary desertion of the spirit 
from the body, and therefore the body sleeps ] 

Ev. Not absolute desertion, but a limit to its in- 
fluence. Many have thought in conformity to your 
question ; and indeed, Ida, it is a belief so holy, 
that I may feel it to be almost an impiety to differ. 

From the time of Aristotle to Haller, the term 
" Sleep" expresses that condition which is marked 
by a cessation of certain mental manifestations, co- 
incident with the degree of oppression ; for it is an 
error to say that the body sleeps : it is the brain 
only, perhaps I may say the cerebrum, or the fore 
lobes ; for I believe the lower part of it (that which 
imparts an energy to the process of breathing and 
of blood circulation) is never in a complete sleep, 
but merely in a state of languor, or, rather, of re- 
pose, sufficient for its restoration ; if it were to 
sleep, death would be the result. 

This repose is in contrast with a state of waiting, 
that activity of mind in which ideas are constantly 
chasing each other like the waves of ocean ; the 
mode of displacing one idea being by the excite- 
ment of another in its place. 

In that state of sound sleep which overcomes 
children, whose tender brains are soon tired, or old 
persons whose brains are worn, and in persons of 
little reflection, the mind is perfectly passive, and 
its manifestations cease. 

So writes Professor Stewart, that there was a 
total suspension of volition during sleep, as regards 
its influence over mental or corporeal faculties ; and 



196 NATURE OF SLEEP. 

I may even adduce a scrap from Burton, although 
I am an admirer of the quaint old compiler for lit- 
tle else than his measureless industry : 

" Sleep is a rest or binding of the outward senses, 
and of the common sense, for the preservation of 
body and soul. Illigation of senses proceeds from 
an inhibition of spirits, the way being stopped by 
which they should come ; this stopping is caused by 
vapours arising out of the stomach, filling the nerves 
by which the spirits should be conveyed. When 
these vapours are spent, the passage is open, and 
the spirits perform their accustomed duties ; so that 
waking is the action and motion of the senses, which 
the spirits, dispersed over all parts, cause." 

Astr. But is volition always suspended even in 
sound sleep ] Was it not the opinion of Berkley, 
that the mind even then was percipient ? How else 
can we account for the waking exactly at one pre- 
determined hour? If we retire to sleep at the latest 
hour, or oppressed with fatigue, so strong an im- 
pression is produced in our mind, that the break- 
ing of our sleep is almost at the given moment. 

Ev. I will answer you at present, Astrophel, only 
by analysis ; it is not yet time to explain. 

I may grant that there is some latent effect — pass- 
ive memory, if you will — for we do not count the 
hours in sleep, and calculate our time by the clock; 
but we wake, and soon the bell strikes. 

We have on record some very curious instances 
of the periodical recurrence of ideas in a waking 
state, the measurement of time being referrible to 
mental impression, mechanically established by con- 
stant habit. 

There was an idiot once, who was in the habit 
of amusing himself constantly by counting the hours 
as they were struck on the clock. It chanced, af- 
ter some time, that the works of the clock were in- 



NATURE OF BLEEP. 197 

jured, so that the striking for a time had ceased. 
The idiot, notwithstanding, continued to measure 
the day with perfect correctness, by counting and 
beating the hour. This is a story of Dr. Plott's, 
in his History of Staffordshire. 

There is one of more modern date, somewhat 
analogous to this. 

I may quote Holy Writ in support of this passive 
condition of true sleep — nay, even its similitude to 
death. How often do we find allusions to sleep 
and death as synonymous ! Sir Thomas Brown 
was impressed so deeply with this likeness, that he 
" did not dare to trust it without his prayers." 
And the Macedonian, who wished for more worlds 
to conquer, confessed his sleep proved to him his 
mortality. I may quote ancient poetry also in my 
support. Homer and Virgil describe sleep as the 
" Brother of Death;" and, among the profane poets 
of later times, the same sublime association is traced 
of this 

" Mortis imago — et simulacrum." 

Among the ancient allegories, sleep is portrayed 
as a female, with black, unfolded wings ; in her left 
hand a white child, the image of Sleep ; in her 
right, a black child, the image of Death. 

On the tomb of Cypselus, according to Pausani- 
as, night is thus personified. 

Cast. How true, then, was the thought of the 
first deep sleeper on the sensation of slumber : 

" There gentle sleep 
First found me, and with soft oppression seized 
My drowned sense, untroubled ; though I thought 
I then was passing to my former state, 
Insensible, and forthwith to dissolve." 

But how fearful is this resemblance which changes 
" tired nature's sweet restorer" into a type of death ! 
Pr'ythee, Evelyn, do not affright me thus by cloth- 
II 2 



198 NATURE OF SLEEP. 

ing sleep with terror, as if it were disease and dan- 
ger. 

Ev. Why tremble for the mortal sleep of the 
just and good, who will feel, with William Hunter, 
on their deathbed, " how pleasant and easy it is to 
die ;" and with another moralist, 

" Oh what a wonder seems the fear of death, 
Seeing how gladly we all sink to sleep ; 
Night following night !" 

Fear not, Castaly ; I do not term slumber and 
gentle sleep disease, but signs of health. Not so, 
however, many a profound sleep, and its advances 
towards coma; those results of exhaustion from ex- 
cess, or from intense and direct narcotics, as opium 
sleep, and the paralyzing senselessness from ex- 
treme cold, as in the story of Sir Joseph Banks and 
Dr. Solander in the antarctic regions. 

You are aware that many remedies in medicine 
may be so intense as to cause fatality ; inflamma- 
tion, too, is the restorative process of wounds, but 
if in excess it is fatal. Appetite also, to a certain 
degree, is healthy ; but craving and thirst, its ex- 
tremes, are proved, by suffering, to be morbid. 

If the mind is composed to perfect rest, it is lulled 
to senselessness ; then, metaphysically, we are said 
to sleep : the mind is not excited by thought, and, in 
consequence, its supply of arterial blood is less, the 
more rapid flow of which would be the cause of 
waking. 

Within certain limits sleep is a remedy, but it 
becomes perilous when intense, or too much in- 
dulged. One eccentric physician, as we read in 
the learned Boerhaave, even fancied sleep the natu- 
ral condition of man, and was wont to yield to 
its influence during eighteen of the twenty-four 
hours ; but apoplexy soon finished his experiment. 

This negative quiescence (for sleep is not a posi~ 



NATURE OF SLEEP. 199 

tive state) allows the restoration of energy, and then 
we wake. Even the senses accumulate their power 
in sleep ; the eye is dazzled by the light when we 
wake, from the sensitiveness imparted by this ac- 
cumulation. 

The conceits regarding the cause of sleep are so 
various, that if I were to discuss their merits I 
should only weary your patience, as I perceive I 
have already done. 

Some have thought that sleep arose from certain 
conditions of the blood in the vessels and nerves of 
the brain, its congestion in the sinuses, or a reflux 
of a great portion of it towards the heart ; the re- 
sult of depressed nervous energy, exhaustion, fa- 
tigue, cold, and the influence of powerful narcotics, 
or the combustion of charcoal. Others, that sleep 
arises from the deposition of fresh matter on the 
brain, and its sudden pressure. Then we have the 
cerebral collapse of Cullen and of Richerand ; the 
deficiency of animal spirits of Haller ; the dimin- 
ished afflux of blood to the brain of Blumenbach, 
and the exhausted irritability of the Brunonian theo- 
ry adopted by Darwin. 

Where the truth lies I presume not to decide, 

but it is clear there is a necessity for the occasional 

repose of the mental organ : 

" Non semper arcum 

Tendit Apollo." 

Watchfulness invariably reduces, even in the 
brute : the wild elephant is tamed by the perse- 
verance of the hunter in keeping it constantly 
awake. ) 

The mind, then, as it is manifested to us (for 
deeply important is it that we confound not the 
perfect and pure, because unimbodied essence of 
the soul, with its combined existence in the brain — 
that union from which a thought is bom), the mind 






200 NATURE OF SLEEP. 

cannot exert itself beyond a certain period without 
a sensation of fatigue in the brain, as palpable as 
the exhaustion from excessive muscular exertion. 
And this depends on a natural law, that organs, 
after acting a certain given period, flag and lose 
their energy. Thus the first harbinger of sleep is 
the closing of the lids from languor, and relaxation 
of the muscles. Muscular fibre will, however, re- 
gain its expenditure by simple rest, requiring a 
certain period for this reaccumulation, like the 
charging of an electrical jar. Sleep, however, is 
not always a sequence of exhausted irritability of 
muscle ; we may be too tired to sleep ; and thought 
and memory also will keep the mind awake, and 
prevent nervous energy from renewing corporeal 
vigour. 

The excitement of thought beyond certain limits 
is both painful and destructive, evincing its effects 
by various grades of mental disorder, from simple 
headache to confirmed mania. Our first ray of 
hope, in fever, is often the coming on of a quiet 
sleep, and in the sad cases of delirium tremens we 
must either sleep or die ; the effort of philosophical 
determination to overcome the depression only 
adding to its intensity, as in the case of a person 
worn out by labour in attempting to labour on. 
This conflict cannot be more pertinently exempli- 
fied than by some passages in the life of Collins, 
by one who knew him well : 

" He languished some years under that depres- 
sion of mind which unchains the faculties without 
destroying them, and leaves reason the knowledge 
of right without the power of pursuing it. These 
clouds, which he perceived gathering on his intel- 
lects, he endeavoured to disperse by travel, and 
passed into France ; but found himself constrained 
to yield to his malady, and returned. His dis>Qrder 



NATURE OF SLEEP. 201 

was no alienation of mind, but general laxity and 
feebleness, a deficiency rather of his vital than in- 
tellectual powers. What he spoke wanted neither 
judgment nor spirit, but a few minutes exhausted 
him, so that he was forced to rest upon the couch 
till a short cessation restored his powers, and he 
was again able to talk with his former vigour." 
y I believe that sensibility and fatigue of mind, by 
/ inducing sleeplessness, may often be the source 
v even of mania. 

The sleep of animals is usually liglit, especially 
that of birds, and they are easily startled when at 
roost. The cackling of the geese on their awaking, 
you know, saved the Roman capitol. Yet sleep is 
altogether very nearly balanced with waking. 
Some animals sleep often, like the cats, but they 
are long awake, and prowling in the night. The 
python and the boa are also long awake, and then 
sleep for many days during the process of diges- 
tion. Indeed, all the ferce fall into sound sleep 
after feeding, while the ruminants scarcely sleep 
at all ; nor do they crouch like the ferce, with the 
head between the legs : but, then, their whole life 
is one scene of quiet — rumination is a mindless 
revery. The West Indian slaves and the Hotten- 
tots, or woolly bipeds, resemble the brute animal 
in this, that they fall asleep as soon as their labour 
is concluded. 

That activity of mind in excess may induce even 
mania, I may offer two impressive, although nega- 
tive proofs, from the records of Dr. Rush. " In 
despotic countries, and where the public passions 
are torpid, and where life and property are secured 
only by the extinction of domestic affections, mad- 
ness is a rare disease. Dr. Scott informed me that 
he heard of but one single instance of madness in 
China." 



202 NATURE OF SLEEP. 

"After much inquiry, I have not been able to 
find a single instance of fatuity among the Indians, 
and but few instances of melancholy and madness." 

I may add, that Baron Humboldt assures us of 
this immunity among the wild Indians of South 
America. 

Ida. And may not this melancholy effect be 
averted by caution and rule 1 We have a saying 
in Herefordshire, that " Six hours are enough for 
a man, seven for a woman, and eight for a fool." 

Ev. There cannot be a fixed rule on that point 
except the prevailing law of nature — the feeling 
of necessity ; but this may often lead astray. 

It is calculated that one half of a child's life is 
passed in sleep, and one quarter to one sixth of the 
adult existence ; but for old age there is no essen- 
tial period or limit. Old Parr slept almost con- 
stantly about the close of his life, while Dr. Gooch 
records the case of one whose period of sleep was 
only one quarter of an hour in the twenty-four. 
It is well to inure an infant to a gradual diminu- 
tion of its time to sleep, so that at ten years old its 
period should be about eight hours. 

The strength or energy of brain will, when aid- 
ed by custom, modify the faculty of controlling the 
disposition to slumber. Frederic the Great, and 
our own Hunter, slept only five hours in the twen- 
ty-four, while Napoleon seemed to exert a des- 
potic power over sleep and waking, even amid the 
roaring of artillery. Sir J. Sinclair slept eight 
hours, and Jeremy Taylor three. As a general 
precept, however, for the regulation of sleep in en- 
ergetic constitutions, I might propose the wise dis- 
tribution which Alfred made of his own time into 
three equal periods — one being passed in sleep, 
diet, and exercise, one in despatch of business, and 
one in study and devotion. Careful habit will often 



NATURE OF SLEEP. 203 

produce sleep at regular and stated periods, as it 
will render the sleeper insensible or undisturbed 
by loud noises ; the gunner will fall asleep on the 
carriage amid the incessant discharge of the can- 
non ; and, if I remember right, the slumbers of the 
bell-ringer of Notre Dame were not broken by 
the striking of the quarters and the hour close to his 
ear. 

Ida. And at what seasons should we wake and 
sleep '? It seems to me that the Creator himself 
has written his precepts in the diurnal changes of 
this world, that are still so healthfully observed by 
the peasant, but so strangely perverted by the ca- 
pricious laws of fashion, and even by the romantic 

" Sons of night, 
And maids that love the moon," 

always excepting Astrophel and Castaly. It moves 
my wonder that they who have looked upon the 
beauty of a sunrise from the mountain or the main 
can be caught sleeping, when such a flood of glory, 
beyond all the glare of peace-rejoicings and birth- 
lights, bursts upon the world. 

Ev. The wisest have thought with you, Ida, al- 
though there was one idle poet, even Thomson, 
who confessed he had " noe motive for rising 
early." It was the custom of Jewel and Burnet 
to rise at four ; and Buffon, we are told, rewarded 
his valet with a crown if he succeeded in getting 
him up before six. 

It is to slight the creation not to enjoy the beau- 
ties of daylight, and it is the natural time for sleep 
when the dews of night are on the earth. The 
proof of this : There were two French colonels 
who were marching their troops, one by day, the 
other by night, and the loss in men and horses 
was very far greater among the night-marchers. 

Cast. I believe it was Panza who " never de- 



204 



NATURE OF SLEEP. 



sired a second sleep, because the first lasted from 
night till morning" — that immortal Sancho Panza, 
whose quaint rhapsody we must all echo so grate- 
fully, " Blessed is he that first invented sleep." The 
eulogies of this blissful state and the wailings of a 
sleepless spirit have ever been a favourite theme 
of the poet and our own ancient dramatists, as 
Beaumont and Fletcher in the play of " Valen- 
tinian," and Shakspeare from the lips of Henry 
IV., in" his beautiful invocation, and Young, and 
many others. 

Ev. Sleeplessness is one of the severest penal- 
ties of our nature. In the darkness and silence of 
night the wakeful mind preys on itself ; the pulse 
is rapid — it is a throb of anguish ; to the wearied 
thought there is no conclusion, and the parched 
tongue prays in vain for the morning light. In 
the Curse of Kehama, I think the sleepless lid is 
one of the most cruel inflictions ; and in the severe 
disorder which we term 7ie??iicrania, this curse is, 
to a degree, realized. 

The sleeplessness of Caligula is related by Sue- 
tonius. In Bartholinus we read of one who slept 
not for three months, and he became a melancholy 
hypochondriac ; and Boerhaave,from intense study, 
was constantly awake during six weeks. 

Ida. We are happy in our quiet minds, are we 
not, dear Castaly ] yet if we are ever summoned 
to the couch of one wearied by night- watching, 
Evelyn will tell us how we may soothe the pillow 
of a sleepless mind, to which the secret of indu- 
cing slumber would be a priceless treasure. 

Ev. Study the causes of insomnia, or sleepless- 
ness, Ida, as those which excite nervous irritabil- 
ity — coffee, green tea, small doses of opium, the 
protracted use of antimony, &c, and believe not 
in the virtues of vulgar remedies, often as danger- 



NATURE OF SLEEP, 205 

ous as they are ridiculous. There is a batch of 
these which Burton has gleaned from various au- 
thors ; as a sample — nutmegs, mandrakes, worm- 
wood ; and from Cardan and Miraldus — the anoint- 
ing the soles of the feet with the fat of y a dormouse, 
and the teeth with the ear-wax of a dog, swine's 
galls, hares' ears, &c. 

I might offer to you many plain precepts for the 
alleviation of the light causes of sleeplessness, and 
while I dole them out to you in very dulness, you 
will fancy my gold-headed cane to my chin, and 
other essential symbols of an Esculapius of the 
olden time. Adopt, then, a free ventilation in 
summer, and airing in winter, of the chamber. 
This should never be a mere closet, always above 
the ground floor, neither very light nor dark, the 
window not being close to the bed, and, above all, 
not in the vicinity of stoves, ovens, and large kitch- 
en fires. Do not allow the windows to be open 
throughout the nio;ht to admit the cold dew or air, 
and in winter the basket-fire should be placed 
there for an hour before you enter your chamber. 
A slight acceleration of the circulation may be 
produced by gentle exercise before rest, and two 
or three wafer-biscuits or spring-water to prevent 
the wakeful effects of both chilliness and hun- 
ger. A light woollen sock may be worn, which is 
unconsciously displaced when sleep comes on, and 
the nightcap should be little more than a net, ex- 
cept during the very cold months. The position 
of the body should be that which is the easiest, 
except the supine, which induces congestion and 
often " nightmare," and if there be much sensitive- 
ness of the surface, the hydrostatic bed should be 
employed, but that not too long, as it will become 
heated by protracted pressure. Children should 
not be enveloped in clothes nor crowded in bed, 
S 



206 SUBLIMITY AND IMPERFECTION 

nor should infants be shaken, or tossed, or patted, 
as foolish nurses too often do. 

There are many simple modes of inducing slum- 
ber : I allude not to poppy and henbane, nor to 
the pillow of hops, which, in the case of our third 
George, was the charm that sealed up the lids of 
the king, but to other modes, such as a tedious re- 
cital (something like my own dull prosing), the 
gentle motion of a swing, a cot, or cradle, the rip- 
ple of a stream, and the dashing of a waterfall, the 
waving of a fan, the caw of rooks, the hum of bees, 
the murmur of an iEolian harp — 

Cast. So gracefully wound up in that quaint 
morceau, the " Fairy Queen," when Archimago 
sends the spirit to fetch a dream from Morpheus : 

" Cynthia still doth steepe 
In silver dew his ever-drooping head, 
Whiles sad night over him her mantle black doth spred. 

And more to lull him in his slumber soft, 
A trickling stream, from high rocke tumbling downe, 
And ever-dringling rain upon the loft, 
Mix'd with a murmuring winde, much like the soune 
Of swarming bees, did cast him in a swoune." 



SUBLIMITY AND IMPERFECTION OF 
DREAMING. 

" We are such stuff 
As dreams are made of, and our little life 
Is rounded by a sleep." — Tempest. 

Ev. In the transition to andjfrom the repose of 
sleep, the mind is sinking into oblivion, and thought 
is fading, and the senses and sensation are over- 
shadowed in their regress to insensibility ; even 
instinct is wellnigh a blank. This is the state of 
slumber. Then, I believe, and only then, are we ever 
wandering in the ideal labyrinth of DREAMS. 

There is a curious calculation of Cabanis, that 



OF DREAMING. 207 

certain organs or senses of the body fall asleep at 
regular progressive periods ; some, therefore, may- 
be active, while others are passive ; and in this in- 
teresting state, I may hint to you, consists the es- 
sence of a dream. It seems that in dreamless sleep 
the senses fall asleep altogether, as in the case of 
Plutarch's friends Thrasymenes and Cleon, and 
others who never dreamed. 

Astr. So there is some truth in the fanciful con- 
ceit of Cardanus, that " Sleep is the rest of the 
spirits, waking their vehement motion, and dream- 
ing their tremulous motion." 

Cast. And philosophy plumes herself on her 

wondrous intuition for this discovery. Let her 

blush and kneel before the shrine of poesy. The 

poets, even of a ruder age than ours, have thought 

and written before you, Evelyn, and have unfolded 

these arcana. How doth Chaucer usher in his 

" Dreme V* 

" Halfe in dede sclepe, not fully revyved ;" 

and again : 

" For on this wyse, upon a night, 
As ye have heard, withouten light, 
Not all wakyng ne full on slepe, 
About such hour as lovirs wepe ;" 

and in "La Belle Dame sans Mercy" there is the 
same thought : 

" Halfe in a dreme, not fully well awaked ;" 
and in Sir Walter's "Antiquary:" "Eh, sirs, sic 
weary dreams as folk hae between sleeping and 
waking, before they win to the long sleep and the 
sound." So will your philosophy dwindle some- 
what in its consequence, Sir Clerke. 

Ev. We are not jealous of these glimpses of a 
poet, Castaly ; they impart a value to their rhymes : 
we enrol such poets in the rank of philosophers. 

Ida. Solve me this question, Evelyn: is there 



208 SUBLIMITY AND IMPERFECTION 

any relative difference between the subjects of 
dreams before and after sleep % 

Ev. It has been thought that there is more ref- 
erence to reality in the first, and more confusion 
and wandering of imagination in the second; but 
as nature is often excited rather than exhausted at 
night, there may be equal brightness with the 
morning dream, occurring after the recreation arid 
refreshment of sleep. 

Cast. We may concede, then, some wisdom to 
the Sybarites, who destroyed their morning her- 
alds, the cocks, that they might enjoy their matin 
dreams undisturbed. And I remember one of 
Pope's allusions to the virtues of this vnap, or 
morning dream : 

" What time the morn mysterious visions brings, 
While purer slumbers spread their golden wings." 

Astr. We have often discoursed on the psy- 
chology of Locke, Evelyn, and we are now involved 
in one of its most interesting points — innate idea. 
Is the dreamer conscious of his dream 1 It has been 
asserted, especially by two profound metaphysi- 
cians, Beattie and Reid, that they persuaded them- 
selves in their dreams that they were dreaming, 
and would then attempt to throw themselves off a 
precipice ; this awoke them, and proved the im- 
pression a fiction. Were there not present in this, 
volition and consciousness ; and is it not an evi- 
dence of an innate idea without sensation % 

Ev. No. A train of thought and passive mem- 
ory may take place without volition, even in a 
waking mind ; a train of reasoning cannot ; so feel- 
ing and passive thought may in the mere dream, 
but not a conscious acting on it. The phenomena, 
and the expressions used to describe these impres- 
sions, are precisely illustrative of another condition 
of sleep, to which we have not yet pointed. This 



OF DREAMING. 209 

notion of Beattie was but an echo of Aristotle 
The Stagyrite himself was subject to dreams of 
danger, and, after a while, he used to whisper to 
himself, " Don't be frightened — this is only a 
dream :" the glaring proof that it was not ; and yet 
psychologists still talk of the management oi a dream 

The fairest explanation is, that there has been a 
predetermination on some point, and unconscious 
ideas on the same point are elicited, or may be the 
first to present themselves to the mind in the morn- 
ing, at the moment we awaken, and thus it is the 
first which the judgment acts on in its revery ; that 
is, the line between dreaming and being awake. 
If there be many organs asleep, there is still some 
clouding of this judgment ; but if that be asleep 
also, there is an absolute dream. 

If we know that we are dreaming, the faculty of 
judgment cannot be inert, and the dream would be 
known to be a fallacy. We might, by thinking, 
render our dream what we pleased, and be sure 
we should never wish for devils or dangers. The 
essence of the dream is that it is uncontrolled: 
other states are not dreaming. Above all, if judg- 
ment influenced the dream of Beattie, who was 
not a madman, would he have wished to have 
toppled down headlong from a rock 1 Listen to 
Johnson on this point. He related that he had 
once, in a dream, a contest of wit with some other 
person, and that he was very much mortified by 
imagining that his opponent had the better of him. 
" Now," said he, " one may mark here the effect 
of sleep in weakening the power of reflection ; 
for, had not my judgment failed me, I should have 
seen that the wit of this supposed antagonist, by 
whose superiority I felt myself depressed, was as 
much furnished by me as that which I thought I 
had been uttering in my own character." 
14 S 2 



210 SUBLIMITY AND LMPERFECTION 

Nay, in the words of Beattie himself, in his 
" Essay on Truth," 

" Sleep has a wonderful power over all our 
faculties. Sometimes we seem to have lost our 
moral faculty, as when we dream of doing that 
without scruple or remorse which, when awake, 
we could not bear to think of. Sometimes mem- 
ory is extinguished, as when we dream of con- 
versing with our departed friends, without remem- 
bering anything of their death, though it was, per- 
haps, one of the most striking incidents we had 
ever experienced, and is seldom or never out of 
our thoughts when we are awake." 

Even the most sensitive and amiable girls will 
dream of committing murder, or the most awful 
crimes, without any sense of compunction. We 
feel no surprise at the working of our own mira- 
cles ; and we know not how to avoid danger. I 
have myself dreamed of occurrences long past as 
if they were of to-day ; have fretted in my sleep 
on ideal events, and on waking was for a moment 
wretched. But I have reflected, awake, on these 
very events, and have not only felt resigned, but 
deemed them benefits. 

There was in the University of Gottingen the 
physician Walderstein. He was a constant dream- 
er, and this is his account of one of these illusions. 
" I dreamed that I was condemned to the stake, 
and during my execution I was perfectly com- 
posed, and, indeed, reasoned calmly on the mode 
in which it was conducted ; whispering to myself, 
' Now I am burning, and presently I shall be con- 
verted into a cinder.'" It seems that he was dis- 
satisfied with his dream on account of this apa- 
thetic calmness ; and he concludes, " I was fearful 
I should become all thought and no feeling." 1 
would say, he was all illusion and no judgment. 



OF DREAMING. 211 

It is but lately that I dreamed I was reciting a 
metaphysical poem, which my vanity whispered 
me possessed a deal of merit. During the recita- 
tion I thought there was a turning up of noses, and 
of tongues into cheeks — a very expressive sign of 
incredulity and satire. At length a general mur- 
mur ran through the assembly that it was a com- 
plete " boggle." Nothing daunted, I assured them 
that it was a very abstruse passage, and the fault 
was in the shallow comprehension of my audience. 
Need I add that I should blush at such an evasion 
in my waking judgment ] 

How different, also, is our dream from a waking 
thought, in which we can control the fancy ! 

If in the dream the chain be abruptly broken, 
the waking mind does not then carry on the 
train ; and if anything occur in waking, associating 
with the dream, to join the broken link, the dream 
is not completed, but the ideas revert, or are re- 
traced to their source ; and if any idea at the ori- 
gin of the dream be re-excited, there will be no 
consistent continuance of it beyond the dream it- 
self, or if there be, it will bear the stamp of rea- 
soning, losing all connexion with the illusion. On 
the contrary, if we read as we are falling asleep, 
we continue in the dream the subject of our study, 
but erroneously ; and if we then start and wake, 
we shall find that at the moment of slumber we 
had changed the integrity of our thinking. Be as- 
sured, then, that Virgil is correct in this : 

" She seems alone 
To wander in her sleep, through ways unknown, 
Guidcless and dark." 

Cast. And now, Sir Knight, deign to look on 
the other side of the shield. Answer me with 
sincerity : if your words be true, is not this a high 
privilege of imaginative minds to lift themselves 



212 SUBLIMITY AND IMPERFECTION 

out of the gloomy atmosphere of this world of wo; 

to soar with fancy, not to drudge with fact 1 How 

do I envy a romantic dreamer, like him of whom 

Master Edmund Spenser writes : 

" At length some wonted slepe doth crowne 
His new falne lids, dreames straight, tenne pound to one, 
Out steps some faery with quick motion, 
And tells him wonders of some flourie vale." 

Sleep is, indeed, the reality of another existence. 

Astr. So breathed the thought of Heraclitus 
in words like these, that " all men, while they are 
awake, are in one common world ; but that each, 
when he is asleep, is in a world of his own." The 
fairies are his boon and chosen compeers, and the 
sylphs are as much his handmaidens as those 
around the toilet of Belinda. We are, indeed, the 
happy children, and, like them, our existence is a 
dream of felicity — one long and happy thought of 
the present, with no reflection or forethought to 
mar its blisses. 

Then the shades and memory of departed friends 
and lovers, are they not around us as true and as 
beautiful as when they lived % The common sen- 
timent of enamoured dreamers is, 

" I hear thy voice in dreams upon me softly call ; 
I see thy form as when thou wert a living thing." 

In the dream, ambition is lifted to the loftiest 
pinnacle of her high aspirings, and power and riches 
are showered in profusion in the path of their vo- 
taries from the cornucopia of fancy ; and all this 
with a depth and intensity that gilds for a time the 
moments of waking life. And I agree with Saint 
Augustine, that if we sleep and dream in Paradise, 
our existence will be perfectly felicitous. 

But then, alas ! the cruel waking from this world 
of pleasure. I have breathed many a sigh of sym- 
pathy with Milton's dream of his dead wife, and 
with Crabbe in his " World of Dreams." 



OF DREAMING. 213 

You remember, Evelyn, how oft you have won- 
dered at my absence from our college ccena. You 
thought not that I was then deeply studying how 
I might gain a victory over my thoughts in sleep. 
As my waking memory would, from some indefi- 
nite cause, be re-excited after it had seemed to fade 
and die, so the subject of my dreams has been re- 
sumed after many months, without any chain of rel- 
ative thoughts in the interval. I believed then that 
this might be a dream ; that I had dreamed the 
same before ; but on the morning of the second 
dream, reflection assured me that on the morning, 
of the first I had known and thought on it. I was 
waiting for a golden hour of inspiration, and it was 
granted me. One night came o'er my slumber a 
dream of beauty : there was an innocent happiness, 
a sense of purest pleasure, that might be the beati- 
tude of a peri ere she lost her place in Eden. In 
the morning, the dream was a part of my being ; I 
nursed it throughout the livelong day, and at night 
lay me down to slumber, and again with the sleep 
came the dream. I was thus the monarch of an 
ideal world : the dream was my life, so long as my 
thoughts were on it concentrated, and even study 
was a liemhrandt shadow on its brightness. 

In a moment of rapture I cried, 

" We forget how superior, to mortals below, 
Js the fiction they dream to the truth which they know." 

I opened the leaf of a volume in which an accom- 
plished pen had traced an episode so like my own 
as to make me wonder at its truth. 

It was of a visionary German, who, like myself, 
commanded the phantasie of sleep's own world, 
bringing one night thus in connexion with another. 
He fashioned, like Pygmalion, his idol, Love, and 
nightly met and wooed till he won her to his heart, 
and then he cried, " What if this glorious sleep be 



214 SUBLIMITY AND IMPERFECTION, ETC. 

a real life, and this dull waking the true repose V 
At length his ideal of beauty, his dream, died, stung 
by a serpent. And then the order of the vision was 
reversed ; the dream lay again before him, dead 
and withered ; he saw his idol only when he was 
awake, and this was to him a dream. He pined 
in thought, and died — sleeping. 

Was not the sleep of this man his real life, and 
a scene of happiness 1 Could he wish for reality 
who had enjoyed such a dream'? For if in life 
there were equal sleep and waking, and the sleep 
were all a happy dream, this would indeed be a 
happy life. 

May I tell you, Evelyn, that I enjoyed a deep 
sublimity of feeling, a consciousness of that mental 
emancipation which devout philosophers have more 
than glanced at % 

Ida. Although you have again rather run wild, 
Astrophel, I agree with you in thinking that, under 
this influence, the dream may be an illustration of 
Plato's notion regarding the existence of eternal 
forms independent of matter — an emanation of the 
divine mind imparted to that of human beings ; that 
innate idea, if you will, by which the mind views 
at large 

" The uncreated images of things." 
And I therefore revere the opinion of Sir Thomas 
Brown, the ingenious author of the " Religio Med- 
ici" (with whom believed Sir Henry Wotton, Bos- 
suet, and other good men), " That we are some- 
what more than ourselves in our sleeps, and the 
slumber of the body seems to be but the waking of 
the soul. It is the legation of sense, but the liberty 
of reason ; and our waking conceptions do not match 
the fancies of our sleeps." And also the sentiment 
of Addison, that " there seems something in this 
consideration that intimates to us a natural gran- 
deur and perfection of the soul." 



PROPHECY OF DREAMS. 215 

Cast. In your temple of transcendental philos- 
ophy you will leave a niche for Shakspeare, dear- 
est Ida, who, even in one of his lightest characters, 
forgets not this perfection of our emancipated spirit. 
Lorenzo whispers to the fair Jewess, in the garden 
at Belmont, 

" Sit, Jessica. Look how the floor of heav'n 
Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold ! 
There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st, 
But in his motion, like an angel sings, 
Still quiring to the young-ey'd cherubims. 
Such harmony is in immortal souls ; 
But, while this muddy vesture of decay 
Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it." 



PROPHECY OF DREAMS. 

" I have heard the spirits of the dead 
May walk again : if such things be, thy mother 
Appear'd to me last night ; for ne'er was dream 
So like a waking." — Winter's Tale. 

Astr. Evelyn, you have argued fluently on the 
nature of mind contrasted with that of matter ; but, 
if desired to define it, how will you answer 1 

Ev. That it is a combination of faculties, and their 
sympathy with the senses. But this definition pre- 
sumes not to decide in what intimate part or tex- 
ture of the brain is seated the essence itself, as we 
may imagine, of the mind — the principle of con- 
sciousness ; whether this be the " elementary prin- 
ciple" of Stewart, or the " momentaiy impression 
of sense or sensation" of Brown, or the " something 
differing from sensation" of Reid, cr the " power 
of feeling that we differ from the matter around us" 
of some one else. 

Astr. Yet on this point (if, indeed, such point 
be more than imaginary) the whole phenomena of 
intellect must turn. But, even if you can ever hope 
to determine this locality, it will be long, very long, 



216 PROPHECY OF DREAMS. 

ere the student of psychology will rise from his 
studies with the triumphant exclamation, " TeAoc I" 
ere he conclude his deepest researches without the 
humiliating confession that his philosophy wears 
fetters. 

Yet you consider our visions as one tissue of 
morbid phenomena, although there are myriads 
even of profane visions and warning legends which 
bear the certain impress of a prophecy. I never 
listen to those who laugh at our interpretations 
without remembering that melancholy story of a 
youth of Brescia, by Boccaccio, where Andreana, 
I think, is relating to her betrothed Gabriello an 
ominous dream of the stars, and of a shadowy de- 
mon, which had made her sad and spiritless, and 
for which she had exiled her lover for a whole 
night from her bosom. The youth smiled in scorn 
of such a presage ; but, in relating a dream of his 
own to illustrate their fallacy, fell dead from her 
enfolding arms. 

For once I will grant you, merely for the sake 
of argument, that there may be exaggeration in 
many a legend. I will even yield to your immo- 
lation the host of specious dreams in " Wanley's 
Wonders ;" you may pass your anathema on the 
volumes of Gianville, and Moreton, and Aubrey, 
and Mather, and Berthogge, and Beaumont, as a 
tissue of imposture ; call them, if you will, 

" A prophet's or a poet's dream, 
The priestcraft of a lying world." 

I will ensconce myself snugly behind the classic 
shields, and ask you if the pages of Pliny, of Cice- 
ro, of Socrates are mere legends of fiction or cre- 
dulity ; nay, if the books of mythology and Orient- 
al legends are not, many of them, founded on real 
events ] 

It is clear that there was ever implicit and ex- 



PROPHECY OF DREAMS. 217 

tensive faith in the East ; the definition of ov sipo, 
J speak ike truth, implies faith in a dream. The 
office of the oneirocritic was a profession. Amphic- 
tyon was the first (according to Pliny) of the pro- 
fane expositors, Hieronymus the most profuse in- 
terpreter, and Lysimachus, the grandson of Aris- 
tides, expounded dreams, for money, at the corners 
of the streets of Athens. The doors of Junianus 
Majus, the tutor of Sanagorius, and Alexander ab 
Alexandro, were besieged with dreamers in quest 
of expositions. 

The Romans worshipped with divine honours 
Brizo, the goddess of dreams ; and the Galeotae, so 
named from Galei, a Hebrew word signifying to 
reveal, nourished in Sicily. So impressed were 
the Jews with the importance of the dream, that 
they convoked a tryad of friends, and went through 
certain ceremonies (as writes Josephus in his 
twelfth book), which they called the benefaction 
of a dream. 

The Orientals, the Greeks, and the Romans, then, 
were all confident in the truth of these omens. 
When Nestor urges his army to battle because 
Agamemnon had dreamed of such a course, it is 
but a picture of the common mind of Greece. In- 
deed, on great emergencies, it was the custom to 
solicit the inspiration of the dream by first per- 
forming religious rites, and then in the temple (it 
may be of Esculapius or Serapis) to lie down on 
the reeking skins of oxen or goats, sacrificed by the 
priests. 

I may not hope, Evelyn, to convert or alarm you, 
or I would warn you of the penalty incurred by the 
slighting of a vision. You may read in Livy that 
Jupiter imparted his displeasure at the punishment 
of a slave, during a solemn procession in the forum, 
to Titus Antinius ; but Titus scorned the vision ; 
T 



218 PROPHECY OF DREAMS. 

when, lo ! his son was struck dead at his feet, and 
his own limbs were at once paralyzed. In a mood 
of penitence, he was borne on a couch to the sen- 
ate, and after a public confession of his crime, his 
limbs began to recover their energy, and he walk- 
ed to his house unassisted, amid the wonder of the 
people. 

In Cicero's essay on " Divination" we read the 
story of two Arcadian travellers. On their arrival 
at Megara, these two friends slept in different 
houses. In the night a dream came to one of 
them : the phantom of his companion appeared to 
him, and imparted to him that his landlord was 
about to murder him. He awoke, and feeling as- 
sured that the idea was but a dream, fell quietly 
again to sleep ; but then came over him a second 
dream, and again the phantom was in his cham- 
ber, and told him that the deed of blood was com- 
mitted — that he was murdered ; and in the morn- 
ing he learned that the vision was prophetic, and 
told him truth. 

But the records of antiquity teem with tales of 
fatal prognostics to heroes, kings, and emperors, 
whose deaths, indeed, seldom took place without 
a prophecy. From Aristotle we learn that the 
death of Alexander was foretold in a dream of 
Eudemius, and that of Caesar by his wife Calphur- 
nia. The Emperor Marius dreamed that he saw 
Attila's bow broken, and the Hun king died on the 
same night ; and Sylla (according to Appian) died 
on the night succeeding that on which he dreamed 
of such a fate. 

Valerius Maximus records the death of Caius 
Gracchus immediately after a dream of it by his 
mother. 

Caracalla (as we learn from Dior Cassius) fore- 
told his own assassination in a dream. 



PROPHECY OF DREAMS. 219 

Cyrus (writes Xenophon) dreamed of the ex- 
act moment in which he died. 

And the death of Socrates was foretold to him 
in a dream by a white lady, who quoted to him 
the three hundred sixty-third line of Homer, in 
the ninth book. 

Of remarkable events there are many strange 
forebodings, as the dream of Judas Maccabeus 
when about to engage the Syrian army ; of Sylla 
before his engagement with Marius ; of Germani- 
cus on the night before his victory over Arminius 
(as Tacitus records) ; and of Masilienus, the gen- 
eral sent by the Emperor Honorius to oppose 
Gildo and regain the possession of Africa. To 
him St. Ambrose, the late bishop of Milan, ap- 
peared in a dream, and, striking the ground at the 
scene of the vision thrice with his crosier, said, 
" Here and in this place ;" and on the same spot, 
the following morning, Gildo was conquered by 
Masilienus. Such are a few of the fatal prophe- 
cies of old. 

There are others of illustrious births in the olden 
time, of which I will recount a few. 

Plutarch writes of the dream of Agariste, an- 
nouncing the birth of her son Pericles. 

Sabellus of the dream of Accia, the mother of 
Augustus. 

The splendid impostures, as I confess them, of 
Mohammed were ushered in by a dream of Cadiga, 
that the sun entered her house, and that his beams 
illumined every building in Mecca. 

In later days, the mother of Joan of Arc dreamed 
that she brought forth a thunderbolt ; and Arlotte, 
the mother of the Conqueror, that her intestines 
covered the whole land of Normandy. 

But I waive a host of ancient dreams, as those 
of Astyages, the last king of Media, Ertercules, 



220 PROPHECY OF DREAMS. 

and Antigonus, and Simonides, and others, for I 
study to be brief, and pass to the professors of 
more modern belief. 

Of Pascal Paoli, Boswell, in his account of Cor- 
sica, thus writes : 

" Having asked him one day, when some of his 
nobles were present, whether a mind so active as 
his was employed even in sleep, and if he used to 
dream much, Signor Casa Bianca said, with an air 
and tone which implied something of importance, 
4 Si, si sogna,' Yes, he dreams ; and upon my ask- 
ing him to explain his meaning, he told me that 
the general had often seen in his dreams what af- 
terward came to pass. Paoli confirmed this by 
several instances. Said he, ' I can give you no 
clear explanation of it — I only tell you facts. Some- 
times I have been mistaken, but in general these 
visions have proved true. I cannot say what may 
be the agency of invisible spirits ; they certainly 
must know more than we do ; and there is nothing 
absurd in supposing that God should permit them 
to communicate their knowledge to us.' " 

In Walton's life of Sir Henry Wotton, we read 
that his kinsmen, Nicholas and Thomas Wotton 
(whose family, by-the-by, were celebrated for their 
dreamings), hadforetold their death most accurately. 

In the beginning of the 18th century, a person 
in the west of England dreamed that his friend was 
on a journey with two men, whose persons were 
strongly pictured in his dream, and that he was 
robbed and murdered by these companions. It 
chanced that in a short time he was about to jour- 
ney with two men, the very prototypes of his friend's 
dream. His earnest caution against this expedi- 
tion so planned was slighted, and on the spot 
marked in the dream was this traveller robbed 
and murdered, and by the vivid description of the 



PROPHECY OF DREAMS. 221 

dreamer the two men were identified and exe- 
cuted. 

In other cases, the dream has been the means 
of retribution ; for instance, by the discovery of a 
murderer. In " Baker's Chronicle" we read of 
the conviction of Ann Waters for the murder of 
her husband through the circumstantial dream of 
a friend. 

I believe the fate of C order was decided by a 
dream; and I may add, that Archbishop Laud 
dreamed himself that in his greatest pomp he 
should sink down to h — 11. 

There is a chain of impressive visions, prophetic 
of the death of Villiers, duke of Buckingham, as 
if some little spirit were flitting to and fro on a 
special mission from the realm of shadows. 

The sister of the duke, the Countess of Denbigh, 
dreamed she was with him in his coach, when the 
people gave a loud shout, and she was told it was 
a cry of joy at the dangerous illness of the duke. 
She had scarcely related her dream to one of her 
ladies, when the Bishop of Ely came to tell her 
her brother was murdered by the dagger of Felton. 
Shortly before this, a Scotch nobleman asked a 
seer from the Highlands what he thought of this 
Villiers, duke of Buckingham, then the court fa- 
vourite : " He will come to naught," said he, " for 
I see a dagger in his heart." 

But the most impressive presage were the visions 
of an officer of the wardrobe to the king, as related 
by the Earl of Clarendon and others. Parker had 
been an old protege of Sir George Villiers, the 
duke's father. On a certain night, in Windsor 
Castle, he saw, or dreamed of an apparition of 
Sir George Villiers, who entreated him to warn 
his son not to follow the counsels of such and such 
persons, and to avert in every way the enmity of 
T 2 



222 PROPHECY OF DREAMS. 

the people, as he valued his life. A second and a 
third night this vision was repeated, and at the 
last, the phantom drew a dagger from his gown, 
and said, " This will end my son, and do you, 
Parker, prepare for death." On a hunting morn- 
ing this vision was imparted to Buckingham at 
Lambeth Bridge, and after the chase the duke 
was seen to ride, in a pensive mood, to his moth- 
er's in Whitehall. The lady, at his departure, was 
found in an agony of tears, and when the story of 
the murder was told, she listened with an apathetic 
calmness, as if the brooding over the prophecy 
had half dulled her heart to the reality. Well, the 
duke was murdered, and Parker soon after died. 

On that night when the Treasury of Oxford was 
broken open, Sir Thomas Wotton, then in Kent, 
dreamed circumstantially of the event, and, I be- 
lieve, named and described the burglars. 

A clergyman, whose name I forget, was once 
travelling far from his home, when he dreamed 
his house was on fire. He returned, and found 
his house a smoking ruin. 

I may here cite a very curious dreaming, which, 
though not exactly fulfilled, displayed at least a 
strange coincidence in three minds. The mother 
of Mr. Joseph Taylor dreamed of the apparition 
of her son, who came to take leave as he was going 
a long journey. She started, and said, " Dear son, 
thou art dead." On the morrow, a letter came 
from his father, expressive of anxiety on account 
of this dream. The son instantly remembered his 
own dream, at the same hour, of having gone to 
his mother's room to bid farewell. 

There are many warning visions, which, being 
happily regarded, were blessed by the preserva- 
tion of human life. 

When our own Harvey was passing through 



MORAL CAUSES OP DREAMING. 223 

Dover, on his Continental travels, he was unex 
pectedly detained for a night by the order of the 
governor. On the next day, news came that the 
packet in which Harvey was to have sailed was 
lost in a. storm ; and then it came out that his ex- 
cellency had, on the night before his arrival, a 
phantom of the doctor passing before him, which 
besought him to detain his substance in Dover for 
a day. 

Alderman Clay, of Newark, dreamed twice that 
his house was on fire. From the second dream, 
he was induced to quit with his family ; and, soon 
afterward, it was burned by the engines of Crom- 
well, which were bombarding the town. For this 
providential salvation an annual sermon is preach- 
ed, and bread given to the poor, in Newark. 

The lady of Major Griffiths dreamed thrice of 
her nephew, Mr. D. The first vision imparted his 
intention of joining a party of his companions on 
a fishing excursion ; the second, that his boat was 
sinking ; the third, that it was actually sunk. At 
her entreaty, this gentleman was induced to remain 
on land ; and in the evening it was learned that 
his ill-fated friends had been all drowned by the 
swamping of the boat. 

Cast. I pr'ythee, Astrophel, draw not too large- 
ly on our faith ; reserve yourself for a struggle, 
for I see in the glance of Evelyn's eye that he has 
taken up your glove. 



MORAL CAUSES OF DREAMING. 

" I have had a dream, past the wit of man to say what dream 
it was. Man is but an ass, if he go about to expound this dream." 
— Midsummer Night's Dream. 

Ev. Listen — it is my turn to speak. 

Like confirmed insanity, the essence of the dream 



224 MORAL CAUSES OF DREAMING. 

is usually a want of balance between the representa- 
tive faculty and the judgment ; being produced, di- 
rectly or indirectly, by the excitement of a chain 
of ideas, rational or probable in parts, but render- 
ed in different degrees extravagant or illusive by 
imperfect association, as in the dream of the " Opium 
eater:" " The ladies of Charles I.'s age danced 
and looked as lovely as the court of George IV. ; 
yet I knew, even in my dream, that they had been 
in the grave for nearly two centuries." 

The relative complexity of these combinations 
includes the two divisions of dreams, the plain, 
■8eo)p7)ijiaTiKOL ; and the allegorical, or images pre- 
sented in their own form or by similitude. 

If we grant that certain faculties or functions of 
the mind are the result of nervous influence, we 
can as readily allow that an iinperfcction of these 
manifestations shall be the result of derangement 
of equilibrium in this influence, as the material 
function of muscle shall be disturbed by primary or 
secondary disease about the brain, of which we 
have daily examples among the spasmodic and ner- 
vous diseases of the body. 

Referring to the calculation of Cabanis on the 
falling to sleep of the senses, I can readily carry 
on this analogy to the faculties of mind. We may 
suppose that the faculty of judgment, as being the 
most important, is the first to feel fatigue, and to 
be influenced in the mode which I have alluded to 
by slumber. It is evident, then, that the other fac- 
ulties, which are still awake, will be uncontrolled, 
and an imperfect association will be the result. 

Thus the ideas of a dream may be considered as 
a species of delirium ; for the figures and situations 
of both are often of the most heterogeneous descrip- 
tion, and both are ever illusive, being believed to 
be realities, and not being subject to the control of 



MORAL CAUSES OF DREAMING. 225 

our intellect. Yet, if the most absurd dream be 
analyzed, its constituent parts may consist either of 
ideas, in themselves not irrational, or of sensations 
or incidents which have been individually felt or 
witnessed. 

So the remembered faces and forms of our ab- 
sent friends, faithful though a part of the likeness 
may be, are associated with the grossest absurdity. 

lut asgri somnia, vanae 
Fingentur specie*, ut nee pes nee caput uni 
Reddatur formae.'' 

Or, as Dryden has written, 

" Dreams are but interludes which Fancy makes: 
When monarch Reason sleeps, this mimic wakes ; 
Compounds a medley of disjointed things, 
A mob of cobblers, and a court of kings. 
Light fumes are merry, grosser fumes are sad, 
Both are the reasonable soul run mad ; 
And many monstrous forms in sleep we see, 
That neither were, nor are, nor e'er can be.'* 

The little variations in the tissue of a dream arc 
not rectified by judgment. So the vision may have 
led us to the very consummation of the highest 
hopes with love and beauty, and then, if an object 
even of degradation or deformity shall cross the 
dream, an association shall be formed imparting a 
feeling of loathing and horror. 

You may take Hobbes's illustration, Astrophel, 
which you will probably prefer to mine. Hobbes 
says of the compositions of phantoms, " Water, 
when moved at once by divers movements, receiv- 
eth one motion compounded of them all ; so it is in 
the brain, or spirits stirred by divers objects : there 
is composed an imagination of divers conceptions 
that appeared single to the sense ; as sense at one 
time showeth the figure of a mountain, at another 
of gold, and the imagination afterward composes 
them into a golden mountain." 

I believe Parkhurst also will tell you that the 



226 MORAL CAUSES OF DREAMING. 

Hebrew word for dream refers to things erroneous- 
ly viewed by the senses ; for each may assume, in- 
dividually, an intimate accordance with another, 
although the first and last appear perfectly incon- 
gruous, as the Chinese puzzle will be a chaos if 
its pieces be wrongly placed ; a faulty rejoining, in 
fact, of scenes and objects reduced to their constit- 
uent elements. 

" I dreamed once," said Professor Maass, of 
Halle, " that the pope visited me. He command- 
ed me to open my desk, and he carefully examined 
all the papers it contained. While he was thus 
employed, a very sparkling diamond fell out of his 
triple crown into my desk, of which, however, nei- 
ther of us took any notice. As soon as the pope 
had withdrawn, I retired to bed, but was soon obli- 
ged to rise on account of a thick smoke, the cause 
of which I had yet to learn. Upon examination, I 
discovered that the diamond had set fire to the pa- 
pers in my desk, and burned them to ashes." 

This dream deserves a short analysis, on account 
of the peculiar circumstances which occasioned it. 
" On the preceding evening," continues Professor 
Maass, " I was visited by a friend, with whom I 
had a lively conversation upon Joseph II. 's sup- 
pression of monasteries and convents. With this 
idea, though I did not become conscious of it in 
the dream, was associated the visit which the pope 
publicly paid the Emperor Joseph at Vienna, in 
consequence of the measures taken against the 
clergy ; and with this, again, was combined, how- 
ever faintly, the representation of the visit which 
had been paid me by my friend. These two events 
were by the subreasoning faculty compounded into 
one, according to the established rule, that things 
which agree in their parts also correspond as to the 
whole ; hence the pope's visit was changed into a 



MORAL CAUSES OF DREAMING. 227 

visit paid to me. The subreasoning faculty, then, 
in order to account for this extraordinary visit, fix- 
ed upon that which, was the most important object 
in my room, namely, the desk, or, rather, the papers 
it contained. That a diamond fell out of the triple 
crown was a collateral association, which was ow- 
ing merely to the representation of the desk. Some 
days before, when opening the desk, I had broken 
the glass of my watch, which I held in my hand, 
and the fragments fell among the papers ; hence 
no farther attention was paid to the diamond, being 
a representation of a collateral series of things 
But afterward, the representation of the sparkling 
stone was again excited, and became the prevail- 
ing idea ; hence it determined the succeeding as- 
sociation. On account of its similarity, it excited 
the representation of fire, with which it was con- 
founded ; hence arose fire and smoke ; but in the 
event, the writings only were burned, not the desk 
itself, to which, being of comparatively less value, 
the attention was not at all directed." 

Impressions of memory may not, perhaps, appeal 
consistent with imagination, but, on the principle 1 
have advanced, it will be found that, although the 
idea excited by memory be consistent, these ideas 
may, by fanciful association, become imagination, 
appearing, on superficial view, to illustrate the 
doctrine of innate idea. But is this doctrine pro- 
ved 1 We may seem to imagine that which we do 
not remember as a whole; but as a curve is made 
up of right lines, as a mass is composed of an infinity 
of atoms, so may it follow that what is termed 
"innate idea," if minutely divided, may be proved 
to arise from memory, made up of things, howev- 
er minute, which we have seen or heard of. Anal- 
ysis may thus unravel many a " strange, mysterious 
dream." 



228 MORAL CAUSES OF DREAMING. 

Ida. I have ever believed that there were inci- 
dents recorded which left no doubt of the truth of 
innate idealism. Dr. Beattie has observed : " Men 
born blind, or who have lost all remembrance of 
light and colours, are as capable of invention, and 
dream as frequently as those who see." 

Ev. These, fair lady, are surely very imperfect 
data. If a person loses remembrance of individual 
colour, he does not lose the power of comparing or 
of judging variety of colour. And, again, although 
he may be congenitally blind, yet if there be any 
other sense but sight, through which the mind can 
perceive or receive external impression, the objec- 
tion must fail. 

There are very strange communities of the senses, 
which you may smile at, yet are they perfectly true. 

Dr. Blacklock (who was very early in life struck 
blind) expressed his ideas of colour by referring to 
a peculiar sound, the two being, as it were, synon- 
ymous to him. And he fancied also, in his dream- 
ing, that he was connected to other bodies by myr- 
iads of threads or rays of feeling. 

I may assure you, too, that on the loss of any one 
sense, the subsequent dreams, after a lapse of time, 
will not be referred to that sense. 

Dr. Darwin will supply you with very illustra- 
tive instances of this ; from which you will learn 
that, after blindness had afflicted certain persons, 
they never dreamed that they saw objects in their 
sleep ; and a deaf gentleman, who had talked with 
his fingers for thirty years, invariably dreamed also 
of finger-speaking, and never alluded to any dream- 
ing of friends having orally conversed with him. 

Astr. I believe that a black colour was disa- 
greeable to Cheselden's blind boy from, the mo- 
ment he saw it. 

Ev. Because, from certain laws of refraction, the 
effect was instantly painful to his eye. 



MORAL CAUSES OF DREAMING. 229 

Astr. I remember that Sir Walter Scott, in his 
" Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft," informs 
us that " those experienced in the education of the 
deaf and dumb find that their pupils, even cut off 
from all instruction by ordinary means, have been 
able to form, out of their own unassisted conjec- 
tures, some ideas of the existence of a Deity, and 
of the distinction between the soul and body." 

Ev. And do you not see, dear Astrophel, the 
dilemma of this argument 1 Before the deaf and 
dumb pupil can adopt a language by which to make 
his preceptor sensible of his thoughts or sentiments, 
he must have had certain facts or knowledge im- 
parted to him by signs or other modes of instruc- 
tion. The modes of mutual understanding must 
first emanate from the tutor, and with these ideas 
may be excited, which at first sight may seem to 
be innate or unassisted. 

Believe not that I deny a moral consciousness 
of the existence of the Deity and of our immortal- 
ity ; but how can we prove it in those who have 
no sense to explain it 1 

If it were possible to find a creature so wretch- 
ed as to be endued with no external sense from his 
birth, such a being would neither dream nor think ; 
he would lead the life almost of a zoophyte, ceas- 
ing, of course, to be a responsible agent ! 

Caspar Hauser never dreamed till he slept at 
Professor Daunay's, and had been introduced to 
intellectual society, and been taught; and then, 
even, he could not comprehend the nature of his 
dreams. 

The arguments in the " Pheedo" of Plato point 
to this truth/that the germ of all ideas is sown in 
the mind by the senses. '. So, also, the metaphysics 
of Kant teach that the senses are feelers or con- 
ductors, by which we obtain materials of our knovvl- 
U 



230 MORAL CAUSES OF DREAMING. 

edge, and, indeed, that matter and sensation are 
synonymous ; that matter exists a priori in the 
mind. This was the belief of Coleridge, that there 
can be nothing fancied in our dreams without an 
antecedent quasi cause, a Roman having written be- 
fore him the same sentiment : 

" Nihil in intellectu, quod non prius in sensu." 

Remember still that this philosophy is apart 
from revelation. 

I am aware that among the deaf and dumb high 
moral sentiments may exist ; but if they can read 
essays, these sentiments may be imbibed in their 
reading. And yet a very learned lord has assert- 
ed that a being doomed to absolute solitude and 
estrangement from his very birth could discover 
the principles of algebra ! At this sophism, O 
shade of Epictetus ! thou mightest rise to vindi- 
cate the importance of our beautiful senses ; of the 
eye, beyond all, that achromatic globe of brightest 
crystal, the contemplation of which first convinced 
thee of design in the Creator, and prompted thee 
to pen the first " Bridgewater Treatise." 

On the opening, or even the restoration of a sense, 
in this forlorn " plant animal," all his associations 
would be erroneous. He would, at first, see double; 
he would, like children, consider all bodies, how- 
ever distant, within his grasp, and, like the idiot, 
draw all his figures topsy-turvy, as they are really 
painted on the retina, until judgment and practice 
rectified his error. 

I do not reason hypothetically, for these truths 
were illustrated in the youth whose pupils were 
opened by the operation of Cheselden. 

There are romantic stories, not foreign to this 
subject, in which the creation of a Caliban is al- 
most a truth, and which exemplify to us the ac- 
cordance of nature with habit and circumstance, 



MORAL CAUSES OF DREAMING. 231 

and the dearth of mind when deprived of the light 
of instruction. 

I allude to those unhappy creatures who, with 
the form and organs of man, have run wild in the 
woods, and fed on husks and berries, and herded 
with the brute. "We have some very curious his- 
tories of these beings, especially in the 17th and 
18th centuries. Two were discovered in the For- 
est of Lithuania ; one in the Forest of Yuary, in 
the Pyrenees, by M. Le Roy ; two wild girls by a 
nobleman, near Chalons, in Champagne ; and Peter 
the wild boy, found by the escort of George I. in 
the woods of Hertswold, in Hanover. In these 
cases disease might have been discovered ; yet the 
effect of partial civilization, even in minute points, 
indicates some power of acquiring ideas not con- 
genital. 

But as to these dreaming flights of the spirit of 
good Sir Thomas Brown, I may confess, Astrophel, 
that you have some poets and metaphysicians, and 
even a few philosophers, on your side. You may 
read in Plato's " Pheedo" that " the body is the 
prison of the soul ; that the soul, when it came from 
God, knew all, but, enclosed in the body, it forgets 
and leams anew." And in Seneca : 

" Corpus hoc anirni pondus est." 
And in Petronius : 

" Cum prostrata sopore, 
Urget membra quies, et mens sine pondere ludit." 

This sentiment Addison has very readily adopt- 
ed, prating about " the amusements of the soul 
when she is disencumbered of her machine," and 
so forth. And yet Addison, I remember, thus qual- 
ifies his creed : " I do not suppose that the soul, in 
these instances, is entirely loose and unfettered 
from the body ; it is sufficient if she is not so far 



232 MORAL CAUSES OF DREAMING. 

sunk and immersed in matter, nor entangled and 
perplexed in her operations, with such motions of 
blood and spirits as when she actuates the machine 
in its waking hours. The corporeal union is slack- 
ened enough to give the mind more play," &c. 

In this conceit, deficient both in philosophy and 
psychology, you perceive the speculator draws in 
his horns, and concludes with that which means no- 
thing. It is, indeed, a mere compromise ; an en- 
deavour to extricate from their perilous dilemma 
the metaphysical pathologists who talk so fluently 
of the diseases of the immaterial mind, forgetful, it 
would seem, of this truth — that which is diseased 
may die ; a consummation which would undermine 
the Christian faith, and blight the holiest hope of 
man — the prospect of immortality. 

And yet my Astrophel will lean to the vagaries 
of our pseudo-psychologists, who believed the 
dream to be the flight of the soul on a visit to other 
regions, and its observation of their nature and 
systems from actual survey. Of the fruits of this 
ethereal voyage, the dreamer, I presume, is made 
conscious when the soul returns to the brain, its 
earthly pabulum or home. Were this so, it should 
enjoy visions of unalloyed beatitude ; and even 
were there a limit to its excursions, a thing so pure 
and perfect would select angelic communion only. 
I do not aver that such things are not, but that we 
cannot know it here. We have no satisfactory re- 
membrance of cities and temples thus surveyed 
more gorgeous than the waking conceptions of the 
thousand and one nights, or the legends of the 
genii ; no wonders or eccentricities which eclipse 
the exploits of Gulliver, Peter Wilkins, Friar Ba- 
con, or Baron Munchausen. 

Lavater carries out this caprice by a very fine 
metaphysical thought, to illustrate the night-appa 



MORAL CAUSES OF DREAMING. 233 

rition — that it is their "transportive or imaginative 
faculty that causes others to appear to us in our 
dreams." And I myself was once gravely told by 
a visionary that he dreamed one night of a cer- 
tain old woman, and she afterward told him that 
she dreamed she was, on that very night, in his 
chamber. So, you perceive, her imago, or mate- 
rial thought, entered into his mind, and caused his 
dream. 

Is not this sublime ] 

Now it is clear that these illusions cannot tend 
to advance the dignity of mind. Nothing can be 
more convincing to prove a suspension of judg- 
ment. Remember that during this life — the incor- 
poration of the soul — we are conscious of it only 
through the brain. It is not yet emancipated ; and 
it is an error to think, because sometimes we have 
a brilliant vision, that therefore, if the body were 
more inactive, the soul would be more ethereal. 

Astr. And yet we are assured that Alexander, 
and Voltaire, and La Fontaine, and Condillac, and 
Tartini, and Franklin, and Mackenzie, and Cole- 
ridge were wont to compose plans of battles, and 
problems, and poems in their dreams, with a de- 
gree of vigour and facility far exceeding their 
waking studies. 

Ev. This very facility proves that there was as- 
sociation from memory, without volition or effort ; 
the mind being in a state of revery, and the senses 
quiescent. In this consists the vivid and delight- 
ful visions lighted up by our memory in slumber, 
especially when there is darkness and silence, so 
that there is no perception ; or when the mind is 
concentrated, and has been reposing, so that its 
fancy is a novelty. 

But this identifying, by Sir Thomas Brown, of 
reason and fancy, is itself a proof of error. The 
U 2 



234 MORAL CAUSES OF DREAMING. 

energy of the first is exercised on data or facts ; 
that of the second in mere hypothetic amusement. 

It were, indeed, much better that we established 
either the material hypothesis of Priestley, or his 
antipodes Berkeley, that nature was but a com- 
pound of spirits, ideas unfettered by matter ; or the 
visionary scheme of Hume (borrowed, indeed, from 
the Hindoo philosopher Abul Fazel), that there is 
naught but impression and idea in nature ; or even 
the absolute skepticism of Pyrrho, than that we 
should favour the rhapsody of Brown, that the con- 
sciousness of waking moments should thus deterio- 
rate reason, and render the mind incompatible with 
sublunary duties. 

Cast. Coleridge, I believe, was so impressed 
with his own dreaming compositions, that he said 
" the dullest wight might be a Shakspeare in his 
dreams." What may he deserve for such pre- 
sumption 1 

Ev. Coleridge was an opium-eater, and the whole 
intellectual life of this mighty metaphysician was a 
dream. And you may forget that Coleridge was 
already a poet, and reasons thus from impressions 
in his own visions during the elysium of his ano- 
dyne.. But the contrasted feelings of Coleridge's 
nights at once confirm the monomania of his dream- 
ing ; and if you read his " Pains of Sleep," Castaly, 
you will not deem them a slight penalty even for 
his libel on your sweet Shakspeare. 

But the conclusions of three sage grave men on 
this subject will impress your belief more than 
mine. The mentor of Rasselas, Johnson himself; 
speaks by the lips of Imlac : 

" All power of Fancy over Reason is a degree 
of insanity. By degrees the reign of Fancy is con- 
firmed ; she grows first imperious, and in time de- 
spotic. Then fictions begin to operate as realities, 



MORAL CAUSES OF DREAMING. 235 

false opinions fasten upon the mind, and life passes 
in dreams of rapture or of anguish." 

And so convinced was the learned Boerhaave of 
this, that he even held imagination and judgment 
to have different localities, because this influenced 
the mind asleep, and that awake. 

And why, Astrophel, dream we of strange things? 
Because we cannot compare illusion with reality. 
So we may reverse the doctrine of Pyrrho (who 
doubted his own existence), and imagine ourselves 
possessed of ubiquity. We may fancy we are both 
old and young at the same moment — nay, that we 
are and are not; possess the hundred eyes of Argus, 
or the hundred arms of Briareus ; that Zoroaster, 
and Virgil, and Shakspeare, and ourselves are co- 
existent. Indeed, our thoughts and actions are all 
modelled on a principle of paradox, as wild even 
as the visions in the " Confessions of an Opium- 
eater." 

Then turn to the words of Marmontel, which 
identify the wanderings of a dream with the flit- 
ting fancies of a mind prostrate from the effect of 
disorder. These words were written under ex- 
treme indisposition : 

" I was reduced so low that I could read no- 
thing but the Arabian Nights' Entertainments ; and 
it is extraordinary that often, while every other 
faculty, judgment, the will, association, perfection, 
even the memory itself, is in a state of almost to- 
tal reaction, this volatile thing, imagination, should 
be the most robust and active ; it seems to rejoice 
at the release from companionship with its fellows, 
and darts off on seraph wings, rambles through all 
space, visits all places, turning, and tossing, and 
jostling all things in its progress, or conjoining 
them in the most grotesque shape. The imagina- 
tion in madmen is often of this description, and 
there may be 



236 



ANACHRONISM AND COINCIDENCE 



" A pleasure in madness that none but madmen know." 
Then we may dream ourselves to be others — an 
ideal transmigration ; this is error. We wake to 
a sense of our own reality ; this is truth. 

Cast. Yet this truth may be often withheld by 
potent impression, as in the illusion of Rip Van 
Winkle, and the trances of Nourjahad. I believe 
the waking mind of Caspar Hauser knew not the 
difference between dream and reality ; he related 
his dream as fact. 

Ev. If there were ever such a being as Caspar 
Hauser, his life was a dream ; for, without the cul- 
ture of his mind, he would be reasonless. 



ANACHRONISM AND COINCIDENCE OF 
DREAMS. 

" Rom. I dreamed a dream to-night. 
Merc. And so did I. 

Rom. Well, what was yours ? 
Merc. That dreamers often lie." 

Romeo and Juliet. 

Astr. Then we are to learn that the mind is ever 
imperfect in a dream. But, Evelyn, is not that 
rather perfection which magnifies space and time 
a million-fold, completing the labours of years in a 
second % The time occupied with the dream must 
be limited, often far short of the seeming duration 
of a scene. Like the wonderful velocity of atoms 
of light, the crude and heterogeneous ideas succeed 
each other with incalculable rapidity. We appear 
to have travelled over a series of miles, or to have 
existed for a series of years, during a very minute 
portion of the night — how minute, it is perhaps im- 
possible to determine. I believe it is the opium- 
eater still who thus confesses: "I sometimes seem- 
ed to have lived for seventy or a hundred years in 
one night j nay, sometimes, had feelings represent 



OF DREAMS. 237 

ative of a millennium passed in that time, or, how- 
ever, of a duration far beyond the limits of any hu- 
man experience." 

This may be, as your simile implies, the dream 
of opium madness ; but let this dream of Lavalette 
also prove some truth in my illustration. 

The count, daring his confinement, had a fright- 
ful dream, which he thus relates : " One night, 
while I was asleep, the clock of the Palais de Jus- 
tice struck twelve, and awoke me. I heard the 
gate open to relieve the sentry, but I fell asleep 
again immediately. In this sleep I dreamed that 
I was standing in the Rue St. Honore, at the cor- 
ner of the Rue de l'Echelle. A melancholy dark- 
ness spread around me ; all was still. Neverthe- 
less, a low, and uncertain sound soon arose. All of 
a sudden I perceived, at the bottom of the street, 
and advancing towards me, a troop of cavalry ; the 
men and horses, however, all flayed. The men 
held torches in their hands, the flames of which il- 
lumined faces without skin, and with bloody mus- 
cles. Their hollow eyes rolled fearfully in their 
large sockets ; their mouths opened from ear to ear, 
and helmets of hanging flesh covered their hideous 
heads. The horses dragged along their own skins 
in the kennels, which overflowed with blood on 
both sides. Pale and dishevelled women appeared 
and disappeared alternately at the windows in dis- 
mal silence ; low, inarticulate groans filled the air, 
and I remained in the street alone, petrified with 
horror, and deprived of strength sufficient to seek 
my safety by flight. This horrible troop continued 
passing in rapid gallop, and casting frightful looks 
on me. Their march, I thought, continued for five 
hours, and they were followed by an immense num- 
ber of artillery wagons, full of bleeding corpses, 
whose Limbs still quivered. A disgusting smell of 



238 ANACHRONISM AND COINCIDENCE 

blood and bitumen almost choked me. At length, 
the iron gate of the prison, shutting with great 
force, awoke me again. I made my repeater strike ; 
it was no more than midnight, so that the horrible 
phantasmagoria had lasted no more than ten min- 
utes ; that is to say, the time necessary for reliev- 
ing the sentry and shutting the gate. The cold 
was severe and the watchword short. The next 
day the turnkey confirmed my calculations. I, nev- 
ertheless, do not remember one single event in my 
life the duration of which I have been able more 
exactly to calculate." 

Cast. You are modest, Astrophel. Think of 
the wonders of fairy land. Our dainty Ariel will 
" place a girdle round the world in forty minutes ;" 
and, even more wonderful still, I have read, in the 
" Arabian Tales," of a monarch who immersed his 
head .in a water-bucket, and imagined he had in 
one minute traversed a space of infinite extent ; 
and (though perchance I should crave pardon for 
anything Evelyn may term an imputed miracle or 
imposture, yet) for a moment listen to the exquis- 
ite passage in the " Spectator," which Addison pre- 
tends to have gathered from the Koran, although I 
believe there is in that book no such story. " The 
angel Gabriel took Mohammed out of his bed one 
morning to give him a sight of all things in the 
seven heavens, in paradise, and in hell, which the 
prophet took a distant view of, and, after having 
held ninety thousand conferences with God, was 
brought back again to his bed;, All this was trans- 
acted in so small a space of time, that Mohammed, 
at his return, found his bed still warm, and took 
up an earthen pitcher, which was thrown down at 
the very instant that the angel Gabriel earned him 
away, before the water was all spilt." 

Ev. If all the circumstances of these dreams 



OF DREAMS. 239 

were rational, I might agree with you, Astrophel ; 
but the ideas are irrational which so far outstrip 
the facts of our experience, except in their esti- 
mation who, like the Hibernian, would value their 
watch because it went faster than the sun. Now 
the extent of velocity in the ideas of insane minds 
is equally extreme ; and, when these anachronisms 
occur in dreams, the ideas are, I believe, ever false. 
Deeply interesting, however, are tales of such cu- 
riosities of dreaming as those which the two Scot- 
tish physicians, Abercrombie and Gregory, have 
recorded. 

" A gentleman dreamed that he had enlisted as 
a soldier; that he had joined his regiment; that 
he had deserted ; was apprehended, and carried 
back to his regiment ; that he was tried by a court- 
martial, condemned to be shot, and was led out for 
execution. At the moment of the completion of 
these ceremonies, the guns of the platoon were 
fired, and at the report he awoke. It was clear 
that a loud noise in the adjoining room had both 
produced the dream, and, almost at the moment, 
awoke the dreamer." 

There was another gentleman who, for some 
time, after sleeping in the damp, suffered a sense 
of suffocation when slumbering in a recumbent po- 
sition ; and a dream would then come over him, 
as of a skeleton which grasped him firmly by the 
throat. This dream became at length so distress- 
ing, that sleep was to him no blessing, but a state 
of torture ; and he had a sentinel posted by his 
couch, with orders to awake his master when slum- 
ber seemed to be stealing o'er him. One night, 
ere he was awakened, he was attacked by the skel- 
eton, and a long and severe conflict ensued. When 
fully awake, he remonstrated with the watcher for 
allowing him to remain so long in his dream, and, 



240 ANACHRONISM AND COINCIDENCE 

to his astonishment, learned that his dream had 
been momentary, and that he was awoke on the in- 
stant that he had begun to slumber. 

But, granting your notions of dreaming perfec- 
tions, Astrophel, there are, to a certain extent, even 
here, analogies. You forget that in our waking 
moments our ideas are often so fleet as to be profit- 
less to our judgment ; and why not in a dream % 
In the estimation of distance, with what velocity the 
train of reasoning passes through the mind ! Ere 
we have formed our notions of an object, how in- 
stantaneous our reflections on all its qualities — its 
brilliancy of colour, its apparent magnitude, its form, 
&c, and the angle of inclination in regard to the 
axis of the eye ; and our conclusions (for judgment 
is awake) are echoes of the truth. But in the 
dream is it so % No. We get the idea (as Mr.. 
Locke has written) of time or duration by reflect- 
ing on that train of ideas which succeed each other 
in the mind. In waking hours the judgment clear- 
ly regulates this ; but in dreams this course of re- 
flection is impeded, and the measurement of time 
is imperfect and erroneous, so that it is the com- 
mon characteristic of a dream that there is no idea 
of time ; the past and the future are equally pres- 
ent. 

Start not if, to strengthen this my illustration, 
I lead you again into the mad-house; again un- 
consciously combine a dream with insanity, in quo- 
ting these expressions of the Rev. Robert Hall 
(from " Green's Reminiscences") in allusion to his 
first attack of mania. " All my imagination has 
been overstretched. You, with the rest of my 
friends, tell me that I was only seven weeks in con- 
finement, and the date of the year corresponds, so 
that I am bound to believe you, but they have ap- 
peared to me like seven years. My mind was so 



OF DREAMS. 241 

excited, and my imagination so lively and active, 
that more ideas passed through my mind during 
those seven weeks than in any seven years of my 
life. Whatever I had obtained from reading or re- 
flection was present to me." 

Ida. The apparent anachronism of such dreams, 
Evelyn, refers to imperfect function. Yet he will 
remember we are reasoning as finite beings. True, 
Malebranche has asserted that " it is possible some 
creatures may think half an hour as long as we do 
a thousand years, or look upon that space of dura- 
tion which we call a minute as an hour, a week, 
a month, or a whole age. But in regard to the 
prospect of futurity, of a more perfect state, who 
of us can decide that this seeming illusion is not 
one evidence of the divine nature of mind ; a re- 
mote resemblance, if I may presume so to say, of 
one attribute of the Creator, to whom a thousand 
years are as one day]" 

I have learned from your own theory, Evelyn, 
that mind is either imperfect or passive in the dream. 
Does not this passive condition itself imply inspira- 
tion 1 For is not that, in which are produced re- 
sults, while itself is inactive, under the special in- 
fluence of some high power, as were the visions of 
the holy records 1 

Although I may not yield my entire belief in the 
fallacy of modern inspiration because it is not pro- 
ved, yet I have not listened to your learning, Ev- 
elyn, without some leaning to the apparent truth 
of your dissertations. I might hesitate to confess 
myself your pupil ; still, the incidents you have ad- 
duced will make me pause ere I again blend pro- 
fane arguments with the truths of holy writ. Yet 
I cannot yield the feeling that the dream is an em- 
blem, at least, of immortality. 

As a beautiful illustration of such philosophy, I 
16 X 



242 ANACHRONISM AND COINCIDENCE 

rememoer (in Fulgosius) a legend told by Saint 
Austin to Enodius : 

There was a physician of Carthage, who was a 
skeptic regarding immortality and the soul's separ- 
ate existence. It chanced one night that Genadi- 
us dreamed of a beautiful city. On the second 
night, the youth who had been his guide reappear- 
ed, and asked if Genadius remembered him: he 
answered yes, and also his dream. " And where," 
said the apparition, " were you then lying 7 ?" " In 
my bed, sleeping." " And if your mind's eye, Ge- 
nadius, surveyed a city, even while your body slept, 
may not this pure and active spirit still live, and 
observe, and remember, even though the body may 
be shapeless or decayed within its sepulchre 1" 

The dreams of Scripture, those " thoughts from 
the visions of night, when deep sleep came upon 
men," were associated with the mission of an an- 
gel, or immediate communion with the Deity ; for 
He has said, in the twelfth of Numbers, that he 
would " speak to his prophets in a dream ;" from 
the first and self-interpreting dream of Abimelech, 
the visions interpreted by the inspired propounder 
Joseph, the first dream of the New Testament, the 
fulfilment of the Annunciation, the impressive trance 
of Peter, in coincidence with the visions of the cen- 
turion, even to the holy visions of the Apocalypse. 

Indeed, the surpassing evidence and truth in all, 
but especially in the inspired interpretation of Jo- 
seph of the dream of Pharaoh, and those of the still 
more inspired oneirocritic, Daniel, cannot be com- 
pared with aught profane. 

The prophet not only expounded, but reminded 
Nebuchadnezzar of his dream when he himself 
had forgotten it. This was the result of special 
prayer to the Deity ; and, remember, without this 
the Chaldeans failed in their efforts. Even Jose- 



OF DREAMS. 243 

phus informs us that Daniel " foretold good things 
and pleased, so that he was deemed divine." And 
you have read that Saul also prayed for a dream, 
but he dreamed not, because he was not holy. And 
there are holy precepts regarding dreams, which 
are recorded to curb our superstitious reliance on 
all. We have assurances of true dreamers in the 
first chapter of Matthew, the second of the Acts, in 
Deuteronomy, and the thirty-fourth of Ecclesiasti- 
cus ; the language of the son of Sirach was, that 
" common dreams only serve to lift up fools." With 
these reservations, I do believe that the real inspi- 
ration of a spirit is the gift only of the holy and the 
good, so that the presumption of divination and 
prophecy by profane dreamers is an illusion ; yet I 
acknowledge, with John Wesley, that many have 
been converted by a dreaming conscience, as we 
read of impressive dreams which have effected the 
conversion of others by the mere recital. Wilmot, 
earl of Rochester, was a skeptic ; but, as we are 
informed by Burnet, in his " Life and Death," his 
mind was first led to the conviction of an immate- 
rial spirit by the prophetic dream of his mother, 
the Lady de la Warre, foreboding truly his own 
death. 

And I must ever admire the moral wisdom of 
Zeno, which (according to Plutarch) induced him 
to regard a dream as the test of virtue ; for, if in 
his dream his heart did not recoil from vicious sug- 
gestions, there was an immediate necessity of self- 
examination and repentance. I cannot forbear add- 
ing that there is much wisdom in the estimation 
of his vision by one of the shepherd kings of 
Egypt, Sabaco. He dreamed that the tutelary 
deity of Thebes enjoined him to kill the priests of 
Egypt ; and, for this unmerciful injunction from the 
gods, that thei/ deemed him u?\fit for the throne, he 
went into self-exile to ./Ethiopia. 



244 ANACHRONISM AND COINCIDENCE 

Ev. The conclusions of these moralists from 
dreaming impressions were somewhat straight- 
laced ; yet your reflections, Ida, point to the safest 
mode by which we may reconcile the conflict of 
the divine and the physiologist, and, above all, 
evince our devotion to the Creator, namely, to 
argue on creation as we see it, and on revelation as 
we see it recorded. 

Yet, with a mock solemnity, dreams and appa- 
ritions have been first adduced as proofs of the 
soul's immortality ; and then, in the same argu- 
ment, are themselves proved by this immortality ; 
the points of the syllogism are reversed, and we 
have petitio principii, a begging of the question. 

This hypothesis of dreaming has formed the ba- 
sis of certain religious impostures, among others, 
of Dubricius and Comedius; and, above all, the 
fanatical visions of Emanuel Swedenborg, who 
founded his especial sect by the declaration of hav- 
ing visited Paradise. 

In our analysis of revelation, the conflict of two 
powerful minds might, on doctrinal points, attack, 
and, in the end, annihilate the faith of each in their 
struggle for the victory ; which may remind you of 
the murders both of Protestants and Papists, es- 
pecially in Ireland, resulting from the wild excite- 
ment of fanaticism and bigotry, and the persecu- 
tions which have, as history records, sprung from 
debates on holy subjects. Remember the martyr- 
dom of the amiable and beautiful Anne Ascue, who 
was burned at the stake for dissenting from the the- 
ological tenets of Henry VIII. regarding the real 
presence. On the rack, her silence was a model of 
heroism, for she might have impeached the queen 
and her ladies ; and Wriothesly, the chancellor, it 
is said, in his rage to extort the secret, himself 
stretched the wheel so as almost to tear her body 
asunder. 



OF DREAMS. 245 

And then the blasphemy of that convocation, 
summoned in the reign of Mary Tudor, to renew 
the discussion on that sacred point of transubstan- 
tiation between the Protestants and the Roman- 
ists ; but I leave this topic to the mild theologian, 
who will confess it would have withheld a stain 
from the page of history had these mock religion- 
ists acknowledged, with the pious Pascal, that "the 
sublime truths of our religion and the essence of 
the immortal spirit are inexplicable by the deepest 
research of wisdom, and are unfolded only by the 
inspired light of revelation." 

Now it was clear that the dreams of the classic 
poets were not all truly prophetic ; and in accord- 
ance with this are their delineations of the house 
of sleep. Indeed, we may almost fancy, for a mo- 
ment, that there might be some reality in these po- 
etical surveyors, until we reflect that the Roman 
notions were plagiaries from the Greeks. 

It is true, the locality of this Palace of Somnus, 
like the site of Troy, is not a little diversified by 
Homer and the rest ; but, whether it be Lemnos, 
or ^Ethiopia, or Cimmeria, these are its descrip- 
tions: 

First of Homer : 

" Immured within the silent bower of sleep, 

Two portals firm the various phantoms keep: 

Of iv'ry one, whence flit, to mock, the brain, 

Of winged lies a light fantastic train. 

The gate opposed, pellucid valves adorn, 

And columns fair incased with polished horn; 

Where images of truth for passage wait, 

With visions manifest of future fate." 

And Virgil's is a close copy. 

In the " City of Dreams" of Lucian, the blas- 
phemer (whose beauties are stained by their im- 
pieties), these eternal gates are again alluded to. 
But the dreams in this city are all deceivers ; for 
when a mortal enters the gates, a circle of domes- 
X 2 



246 ANACHRONISM AND COINCIDENCE 

tic dreams in a moment unfold to him a budget of 
intelligence, which proves to be a tissue of lies. 

Tertullian and many others have argued the 
notion of a special purpose of the Deity in every 
dream ; and the " New Moral World" of the vis- 
ionary Owen asserts, that " one chief source of our 
knowledge is dreams and omens." 

In the eras of inspiration, few will be skeptical 
enough to doubt the occurrence of divine media- 
tions, or not to believe, with Socrates and other 
sages, in the divine origin of dreams and omens. 

The evidence of Holy Scripture again proves the 
occasion, indeed the necessity, for such communica- 
tion ; but, in our own time, I deem it little less 
than profaneness to imagine that the Deity should 
indicate the future occurrence of commonplace 
and trivial incidents through the medium of an or- 
gan confessedly in a state of imperfection at the 
moment when the faculties of mind are returning 
from a state of temporary suspension — a death-like 



Even John Wesley believed dreams to be "doubt- 
ful and disputable ;" and adds, with a half-profa- 
nation, " they might be from God, or might not." 

The Emperor Constantine, you know, denoun- 
ced death to all who dared to look seriously into 
the secrets of futurity. 

When we reflect that the proportion of events, 
seemingly the fulfilment of a dream, is to the myr- 
iads of forebodings which never come to pass (as 
the dreams recorded with some solemnity by He- 
rodotus, of Alcibiades ; of Croesus, regarding his 
son Atys ; of Asty ages and the vine ; ofCambyses, 
respecting Smerdis ; and of Hamilcar, at the siege 
of Syracusa) as a drop in the ocean, the fallacy of 
the doctrine must be evident. I marvel much that 
credulity, in this reflecting age, can gain a single 
proselyte. 



OF DREAMS. 247 

The magi of Persia and the soothsayers of 
Greece and Rome were constantly in error ; and 
Artemidorus Miraldus, who in the reign of Anto- 
ninus wrote his voluminous book " Oneirocriticus," 
has given us the most ridiculous interpretations. 

When the pagan priesthood of old lay down on 
the reeking skins of their victims to rouse the inspi- 
ration of their dreams, it was to cheat their prose- 
lytes. Such were the mummeries in the Temple 
of iEsculapius. The devotees were first purified 
by the " lustral water," and then divine visions 
came over them, and priestesses in snowy robes, 
and a venerable priest in the habit of iEsculapius, 
paraded round the altar, and the charm was com- 
plete. 

You may learn from Martin something about the 
modern influence of such a charm. 

" Mr. Alexander Cooper, present minister of 
Northuist, told me that one John Erach, in the Isle 
of Lewis, assured him that it was his fate to have 
been led by his curiosity to some who consulted this 
oracle, and that he was a night within the hide, as 
above mentioned, during which time he felt and 
heard such terrible things that he could not express 
them ; the impression it made on him was such as 
could never go off, and he said for a thousand 
worlds he would never again be concerned in the 
like performance, for this had disordered him to 
a high degree. He confessed it ingenuously and 
with an air of great remorse, and seemed to be very 
penitent under a just sense of so great a crime ; he 
declared this about five years since, and is still liv- 
ing in the Lewis, for anything I know." 
' In imitation of this spell for the divine inspiration 
of a dream, the modern Franciscans, after the cer- 
emony of mass, throw themselves on mats already 
consecrated b^ the slumber of some holy visionary, 



248 



ANACHRONISM AND COINCIDENCE 



and, with all this foolery, they vaunt the divine in- 
spiration of their dream. 

Cicero, and Theophrastus, and many other sages 
were skeptical of these special visitations, and ex- 
plained rationally dreams and divinations, as Cice- 
ro his dream at iEtina on his flight from Rome. 

Then there is this anathema of Ennius : 

" Augurs and soothsayers, astrologers, diviners, 
and interpreters of dreams I never consult, and 
despise their vain pretence to more than human 
skill." And also this caution bequeathed to you by 
Epictetus : " Never tell thy dream ; for though 
thou thyself mayest take a pleasure in telling thy 
dream, another will take no pleasure in hearing it." 

Astr. Epictetus was himself a dreamer in this, 
for the story of a dream is ever listened to with in- 
terest. And what would Epictetus think were I 
to tell him that broad lands and mitres have been 
gained before now by the shrewd putting of a 
dream ? 

Ev. I confess, as in the illusion of phantoms, 
there are records of very strange coincidences in 
dreaming, which may be startling to many super- 
ficial minds. 

Pefeskius, the friend of Gassendi, after a se- 
vere fever, in 1609, was engaged in the study of 
ancient coins, weights, and measures. One night 
he dreamed he met a goldsmith at Nismes, who 
offered him a coin of Julius Caesar for four car de- 
cues. The next day this incident was repeated to 
him in reality ; but lie was a philosopher, and 
deemed it, as it was, but a rare coincidence. 

There were two sisters, who (as a learned phy- 
sician has recorded) were sleeping together during 
the illness of their brother. One of these ladies 
dreamed that her watch, an old family relic, had 
stopped, and, on waking her sister to tell of this, 



OF DREAMS. 249 

she was answered by her thus : " Alas ! I have 
worse to tell you : our brother's breath is also stop- 
ped." On the following night the same dream 
was repeated to the young lady. On the morning 
after this second dream, the lady, on taking out the 
watch, which had been perfect in its movement, 
observed that it had indeed stopped, and, at the 
same moment, she heard her sister screaming ; the 
brother, who had been till then apparently recover- 
ing, had just breathed his last. 

These are sequences, and not consequences ; and 
I might adduce a mass of these mere coincidences, 
which have been stretched and warped to make up 
a prophecy, such as the following legend of Ser- 
gius G-alba, told by Fulgosius : " Galba had co- 
queted with two marble ladies, the Fortune at 
Tusculum, and the Capitoline Venus ; and to 
adorn the first, he had purchased a brilliant dia- 
mond necklace. But the charms of the Venus of 
the Capitol prevailed over her rival, and the neck- 
lace was at length presented to the goddess of beau- 
ty. At night the form of Fortune appeared to 
him in his sleep, upbraiding him with his falsehood, 
and telling him that he should be deprived of all 
the gifts she had lavished on him ; and Galba, as 
the story goes, soon after died." 

But, if dreams are essentially prophetic, why are 
they not all fulfilled % and if one is not fulfilled, how 
know we if all will not be equally fallacious 1 
The argument for the prophetic nature is merely 
a posteriori, the shallow "■ post hoc, ergo propter 
hoc" of the sophist. On the occurrence of any im- 
portant event, all the auguries and dreams which 
bear the slightest semblance to a prophecy are im- 
mediately adduced, and stretched, and warped to 
suit the superstition, as the whimsical mother will 
account for the marks on her child by frights and 



250 



ANACHRONISM AND COINCIDENCE 



longings. When we know that myriads of enthu- 
siasts and hypochondriacs have, by the failure of 
their predictions, deserved the stigma of false proph- 
ets, we may surely class these fantasies among the 
popular errors of the time. 

Yet the fulfilment of a prophecy ?nay he conse- 
quence, and that without the imputation of false- 
hood or imposition, or of any special interference. 
(I am not recanting my opinions, Astrophel.) 

1st. Through the effect of an imparted impetus. 

2d. Foresight, from the study of events and char- 
acter. 

3d. Constant thinking on one subject. 

4th. Impressions of terror or alarm, from spec- 
tres, sibyls, &c. 

A> there are dreams from impressions on the 
body during sleep, so are there diseased tissues in 
the brain which light up phantoms of terror and 
death perfectly prophetic. But wherefore so 1 
Merely because they are induced by that disease 
which usually terminates in death. Such were the 
dreams during the nightmare which preceded, and, I 
believe, still precede the epidemic fevers in Rome, 
and in those of Leyden in 1669, when the patient 
fell asleep, and was attacked by incubus before each 
exacerbation. The impersonation of death was the 
prevailing phantom of their dream, and, in reality, 
death soon followed. 

Among those heathen tribes where superstition 
and ignorance form part of a national creed, there 
is a degree of blindness and inconsistency that may 
truly be termed mania. It is the doctrine, not of 
prophecy, but of debased and absolute fatalism. 
The North American Indians not only regard the 
dream as prophetic, but often receive it as a sol- 
emn injunction, and are themselves the active agents 
in its fulfilment. " In whatever manner," says 



OF DREAMS. 251 

Charlevoix, " the dream la conceived, it is always 
looked upon as a thing sacred, and as the most or- 
dinary way in which the gods make known their 
will to men. Filled with this idea, they cannot con- 
ceive how we should pay no regard to them ; for the 
most part, they look upon them either as a desire 
of the soul, inspired by some genius, or an order 
from him, and, in consequence of this principle, 
they hold it a religious duty to obey them. An In- 
dian having dreamed of the amputation of his fin- 
ger, had it really cut off as soon as he awoke, first 
preparing himself for this important action by a 
feast!" 

Among more enlightened people there may be 
an inducement to action from the impression of a 
dream; here, also, the consequence is the fulfilment 
of the prophecy. Such, Astrophel, were the dreams 
of Arlotte and Cadiga; of Judas Maccabseus ; of 
Sylla ; of Germanicus ; and of Masulenius ; and 
the dream of the priestess of Proserpine, on the eve 
of Timoleon's expedition from Corinth to Syracuse, 
that Ceres volunteered to be his travelling compan- 
ion into Sicily. The dream of Olympia, that she 
was with child of a dragon, might both have sug- 
gested the mode of education and incited the war- 
like spirit of Alexander. 

We know that the city of Carthage was rebuilt 
by Augustus Caesar in consequence of the dream 
of his uncle Julius. 

And we read in the travels of Herbert that Can- 
gius, the blacksmith of Mount Taurus, aspired to, 
and gained dominion over the Tartars from a sim- 
ilar influence, and from his name has the title of 
" Chan" been since conferred on some of the most 
warlike monarchs of the East.. 

There was a dream of Ertercules that was warp- 
ed by Edebales into the interpretation that Oman 



252 ANACHRONISM AND COINCIDENCE 

should be bora to him, and become a great con- 
queror. 

I have known the dreams of young ladies often 
prove the inducement to their marriage. 

I may remind you, too, that even a simple waking 
incident will impart this power of action. It is a 
record of history, that Robert Bruce slept, during 
his wandering, in the barn of a cottage. As he 
was lying, he saw a spider attempt to climb to the 
roof; twelve times the insect failed ere it gained 
its point. This potent lesson of perseverance in- 
stantly flashed across his mind, and in a few days 
was won the field of Bannockburn. Be sure the 
seers termed this an omen. 

The seduction of Helen was the result of a dream 
of high promise, made to Paris by the phantom of 
Venus. 

Scott (who was executed at Jedburgh, in 1823, 
for murder) confessed that he had dreamed of such 
a crime for many years ere its committal. 

Of the result of constant dwelling on an interest- 
ing subject, I may add these illustrations. 

Antigonus, king of Macedonia, anticipated (ac- 
cording to Plutarch) the flight of his prisoner Mith- 
ridates to the Euxine. 

Of such a nature were the dreams of the Emper- 
or Julian and of Calphurnia, if, indeed, these were 
more than fable ; and such was the dream of Crom- 
well, that he should be the greatest man in Eng- 
land. In all these, and a thousand more, the mere 
constant thinking excited the dream. The ambi- 
tious thought of Cromwell was constantly haunting 
his waking moments, pointing to personal aggran- 
dizement, and, of consequence, imparted a like 
character to the dream of his slumbers. Could we 
have penetrated the privacy of Ireton, and Lam- 
bert, and other Presbyterian leaders, we should 



OF DREAMS. 253 

discover that such ambitious prepossessions were 
not confined to the bosom of the Protector. 

The grandfather of the poet Goethe, on the death 
of an old counsellor at Frankfort, assured his wife 
of his confident belief that the golden ball, which 
elected the vacant counsellor, would be drawn for 
him,. And this belief arose from a dream, in which 
he went in full costume to court, when the deceas- 
ed counsellor rose from his seat and begged him 
to occupy the chair, and then went out of the door. 
Goethe was elected. 

And yet divines, especially, are determined to 
look beyond nature for causes, and refer all this to 
divine foreknowledge imparted to the mind of man. 
There is a solemn letter, written in 1512 by Cardi- 
nal Bembo to one of the Medici, recounting how 
he was opposed in a suit against one Simon Goro, 
by Giusto, and how his mother dreamed that Gius- 
to wounded him in the right hand, and besought 
him not to have altercation with him. It chanced 
that Giusto, who, it seems, was somewhat deranged, 
snatched Bembo's papers from his hand, and after- 
ward, by the Rialto, wounded him in the second 
finger of the right hand. Now is not this a very 
shallow incident 1 and yet the sapient cardinal 
deems it essential to confirm his tale by a solemn 
attestation, thus : " The dream of my mother I look 
upon as a revelation ; and I declare to you, mag- 
nificent lord, by that veneration which we owe to 
God himself, that this recital is the pure and sin- 
gle truth." 

The proofs of an apparent prophecy from fore- 
sight may be seen in those who, by reflection, have 
attained either a worldly or a weather wisdom. 
The sea captain, who has looked out upon the sky 
at night, and has learned the foreboding signs of a 
storm, will often dream of shipwreck ; and the pol- 
Y 



254 ANACHRONISM AND COINCIDENCE 

itician will dream of events, as well as predicate 
consequences, from an enlightened reflection on the 
motives of the human mind, and the general laws 
which, indeed, influence its actions ; so that, with 
a little latitude, it were easy enough for us all to 
construct an almanac column, especially if there be 
granted to us a liberal allowance of " more or less 
about this time." 

Above all, it is our duty to avert the imjiressions 
of evil from the superstitious mind. The appre- 
hension of a misfortune or fatality may prove its 
cause. Ay, and if the intellect were really gifted 
with prescience, how oft would the happiness of 
life be blighted] 

The allegory of the tree of knowledge is a prac- 
tic precept for our lives. 

Astr. And yet Virgil has thus alluded to the 
delight of peeping into futurity : 

" Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas." 

Ev. I would rather echo the benevolent precept 
of Horace to ensure the bliss of ignorance on this 
point : 

" Tu ne qusesieris, scire (nefas) quern mihi, quem tibi, 
Finem Dii dederint ;" 

in other words, " Seek not to know the destiny 

that awaits us." 

And Milton's wisdom, too : 

" Let no man seek, 
Henceforth, to be foretold what shall befall 
Him or his children ; evil, he may be sure, 
Which neither his foreknowing can prevent ; 
And he the future evil shall, as less 
In apprehension than as substance, feel 
Grievous to bear." 

Listen to the melancholy influence of the dream 
and death of Glaphyra, as told by Josephus : 

" She was married, when she was a virgin, to 
Alexander, the son of Herod, and brother of Arche- 



OF DREAMS. 255 

laus ; but since it fell out so that Alexander was 
slain by his father, she was married to Juba, the king 
of Lydia ; and when he was dead, and she lived in 
widowhood in Cappadocia with her father, Arche- 
laus divorced his former wife, Mariamne, and mar- 
ried her, so great was his affection for this Grlaphyra, 
who, during her marriage to him, saw the following 
dream : she thought she saw Alexander standing 
by her, at which she rejoiced, and embraced him 
with great affection, but that he complained of her, 
and said to Glaphyra, ' Thou provest that saying 
to be true which assures us that women are not to 
be trusted. Didst not thou pledge thy faith to me'? 
and wast thou not married to me when thou wast 
a virgin % and had we not children between us 1 
Yet hast thou forgotten the affection I bare to thee 
out of a desire for a second husband. Nor hast 
thou been satisfied with that injury thou didst me, 
but thou hast been so bold as to procure thee a 
third husband, and hast been married to Archelaus, 
thy husband and my brother. However, I will 
not forget my former affection for thee, but will set 
thee free from every such reproachful action, and 
cause thee to be mine again, as thou once wast/ 
When she had related this to her female compan- 
ions, in a few days' time she departed this life." 

The fatality which coincided with the prophetic 
warning of Lord Lyttelton might well be adduced 
as another illustration, were it not for some impu- 
tation of suicidal disposition in that nobleman, 
which would more forcibly invalidate the prophetic 
dignity of his dream. 

I may relate another story, not remotely illustra- 
tive of this influence, from Brand's " Popular An- 
tiquities." " My friend, the late Captain Mott, R. 
N., used frequently to repeat an anecdote of a sea- 
man under his command. This individual, who 



256 ANACHRONISM AND COINCIDENCE, ETC. 

Was a good sailor and a brave man, suffered much 
trouble and anxiety from his superstitious fears. 
When on the night watch, he would see sights and 
hear noises, in the rigging and the deep, which 
kept him in a perpetual fever of alarm. One day 
the poor fellow reported upon deck that the devil, 
whom he knew by his horns and cloven feet, stood 
by the side of his hammock on the preceding night, 
and told him that he had only three days to live. 
His messmates endeavoured to remove his de- 
spondency by ridicule, but without effect. And 
the next morning he told the tale to Captain Mott, 
with this addition, that the fiend had paid him a 
second nocturnal visit, announcing a repetition of 
the melancholy tidings. The captain in vain ex- 
postulated with him on the folly of indulging such 
groundless apprehensions. And the morning of 
the fatal day being exceedingly stormy, the man, 
with many others, was ordered to the topmast to 
perform some duty among the rigging. Before he 
ascended, he bade his messmates farewell, telling 
them that he had received a third warning from the 
devil, and that he was confident he should be dead 
before night. He went aloft with the foreboding 
of evil on his mind, and in less than five minutes 
he lost his hold, fell upon the deck, and was killed 
upon the spot." 

Were an aversion to these gloomy fancies in- 
culcated, it might avert many a fatal foreboding, 
which, even in our own enlightened era, has closely 
resembled the fate of the African victims of Obi ; 
that magic fascination, which its Syriac namesake, 
Obh, works by spell, until the doomed one pines 
to death, with the deep conviction that he is under 
the ban of an enchanter. 



MATERIAL CAUSES OP DREAMS. 257 

MATERIAL CAUSES OF DREAMS. 

" Iago. Nay, this was but his dream. 
Othello. But this denoted a. foregone conclusion ; 

'Tis a shrewd doubt, though it be but a dream." 

Othello. 

Astr. We looked for more from you, Evelyn, 
than these proofs of a negative. 

I presume still to think your philosophy is very 
weak in controversion of the inspiration of a dream, 
and its supernatural causes. I cannot but believe, 
with Baxter, that dreams maybe " spirits in com- 
munion with us." 

Ev. And you will define these shadowless min- 
isters in the fashion of Master Richard Burthogge, 
Medicinae Doctor (in his book, printed by Raven, 
in the Poultry, in 1694). I have a smack, you see, 
of medical bibliomania, Astrophel. Burthogge, 
although one of the most rational interpreters of 
dreams and spectres, thinks their internal causes 
purely metaphysical; and then refutes his own 
opinion point blank by this sophistry, that " there 
are things incorporated,, but invisible, which we call 
spirits ;" as who should say, with Shakspeare's 
fairies, " We have the gift of fern seed ; we are 
invisible. 1 ' 

No ; we will account for the causes of dreams, 
Astrophel, without the ministry of spirits. 

Analyzing, then, the notions of all, it is clear 
that the essence of the dream is recurrence of ideas. 
In the words of Walpole, " The memory retains 
the colouring of the day." 

Now memory is the first faculty to fail in age, 
and you know old people seldom dream : the same 
objects are applied, but there is little or no associ- 
ation, for the brain is dull and feeble ; imbecility, 
indeed, is mad memory. 

The two common periods associated with the 
17 Y2 



258 MATERIAL CAUSES OP DREAMS. 

dream are the past and the future, involving mem- 
ory and prognostication ; the latter being but the 
memory of an intention, an image excited in the 
mind by analogy. Even when present sensations 
excite the dream, it is ever associated, as you re- 
member, with something before seen or felt. 

The waking thought will thus again modify the 
dream ; and Dr. Abercrombie has a curious illus- 
tration of this combining of two minds — one wa- 
king subject, one dream, and one disturbing cause. 

The French invasion was the universal topic in 
Edinburgh ; and the city was, indeed, one company 
of volunteers. It was decided that the tocsin of 
alarm, on the approach of the enemy, was to be the 
firing of the castle guns, followed by a chain of 
signals. At two, an officer was awoke from a vivid 
dream of guns and signals, and reviews of troops, 
by his lady, who herself was affrighted by a similar 
dream, with a few associations of a different nature. 
And whence all this alarm ] the falling of a pair 
of tongs on the hearth, the noise of which was quite 
sufficient for the production of their dreaming as- 
sociations. 

Astr. It would seem to me that Evelyn was too 
anxious to find employment for the brain in thus 
imputing so much to substantial causes. 

There is a funny scrap I remember to have read, 
and of which I may shrewdly suspect my friend to 
be the scribbler. " Whence we may compare the 
powers of mind to a court of judicature — the out- 
ward senses being as the solicitors that bring the 
causes ; the common sense, as the master of re- 
quests, who receives all their informations; and 
fantasy (or imagination), like the lawyers and ad- 
vocates that bandy the business to and fro in sev- 
eral forms, with a deal of noise and bustle ; reason, 
as the judge, that having calmly heard each party's 



MATERIAL CAUSES OF DREAMS. 259 

pretensions, pronounces an upright sentence ; and 
memory, as the clerk, lecords the whole proceed- 
ings." But say, if the dream is but the memory 
of an impression, are metaphysics to be counted as 
a cipher in our discussion of the nature of intellect 1 

Ev. Nay, the psychologist must ever call meta- 
physics to his aid, especially when speaking of the 
health or disorder of mind : there is an intimate 
blending of metaphysics and philosophy. But be- 
lieve not, Astrophel, that I presume to develop that 
mysterious influence which is going on between 
mind and matter, so essential to the manifestation 
of the former, during its earthly condition. The 
mystery will ever be a sealed letter to the intellect. 
It is enough that we have evidence of its existence 
without yearning for deeper insight of final causes. 
I have assured you that I do not believe thought, 
or reflection, or any act of mind to be material, and 
speak even with all due courtesy to the abstract 
metaphysician, and the divine who, doubtless from 
pure and holy motives, would seek to cut the Gor- 
dian knot of this sublime enigma. 

Even Dr. Abercrombie is content with observ- 
ing that the correction of illusions by the sane mind 
is by the comparing power of reason, but he leaves 
the illusion itself unexplained. Indeed, the most 
luminous of pathologists have ever feared to touch 
organization ; Sir Humphrey Davy leaves his beau- 
tiful imaginings vague' and inconclusive, because 
he stops short of the brain. 

The mere psychologist will ever persevere in 
placing even the palpable causes of illusion beyond 
the reach of our inquiries. 

Thus the rhapsodies of Lucretius were a series 
of professed fables, and the theories of Macrobius 
a tissue of capricious distinctions, as you may learn 
from his classification. 






260 MATERIAL CAUSES OF DREAMS. 

1st. oveipoc, somnium, dream. A figurative vis- 
ion to be interpreted. 

2d. opafia, vision. A vision which has afterward 
been exactly fulfilled. 

3d. xPW ariG l i0 Si oraculum. An intimation in 
sleep of what we ought to do. 

(I suppose as the shade of Hector appeared to 
iEneas, warning him, the night before, to escape 
from the flames of Troy.) 

4th. evvTTVtov, insomnium. A sort of nightmare. 

5th. (pavTaofMi, visus and incubus. 

Here is a perfect jumble of classification, the first 
three only being vaunted as prophetic or inspired ; 
the fourth, a nightmare ; and the fifth, if it be any- 
thing, a spectral illusion. 

Others have deemed themselves mighty wise in 
discovering dreams to be the " action of intellect 
on itself." 

Abercrombie, the most learned analyst of the 
mind since Reid and Stewart, has four varieties of 
the dream : 

1st.. From wrong association of new events. 

2d. Trains of thought from bodily association. 

3d. Revival of old associations. 

4th. Casual fulfilment of a dream ! 

You perceive the first and third are merely mem- 
ory, with right and wrong arrangements ; the sec- 
ond, excitement of ideas from present sensations ; 
the fourth, if it be not a mere coincidence, is the 
result, as I have explained, of imparted impetus, or 
deep thinking on subjects presented to the mind. 
The eccentricities of dreaming are not more cu- 
rious than those of the reminiscent faculty when 
awake; indeed, memory itself may seem to be 
sometimes dreaming, and at others e\ en fast asleep. 
Those who survived the plague in Athens (as we 
read in Thucydides), lost for a time the recollec- 



MATERIAL CAUSES OF DREAMS. 261 

tion of names, their own and those of their friends, 
and did not regain it until their health was re-es- 
tablished. 

Mori, during his frequent moods of excitement, 
quite lost his memory of music, so that, for many 
minutes, he could neither read a note nor play from 
memory. 

There have been persons who have very sudden- 
ly forgotten their own names, which they were 
about to announce on a visit to a friend. 

" Mr. Von B , envoy to Madrid, and after- 
ward to Petersburgh, a man of a serious turn of 
mind, yet by no means hypochondriacal, went out 
one morning to pay a number of visits. Among 
other houses at which he called, there was one 
where he suspected the servants did not know him, 
and where he consequently was under the necessi- 
ty of giving in his name, but this very name he had 
at that moment entirely forgotten. Turning round 
immediately to a gentleman who accompanied him, 
he said, with much earnestness, ' For God's sake, 
tell me who I am.' The question excited laughter ; 

but as Mr. Von B insisted on being answered, 

adding that he had entirely forgotten his own name, 
he was told it, upon which he finished his visit." 

The eccentric impressions of this faculty will be 
often intermittent, or marked by sudden yet regu- 
lar remissions. 

There is a very curious case on record of a lady 
whose " memory was^ capacious, and well stored 
with a copious stock of ideas. Unexpectedly, and 
without any forewarning, she fell into a profound 
sleep, which continued several hours beyond the 
ordinary term. On waking, she was discovered to 
have lost every trait of acquired knowledge ; her 
memory was a blank. All vestiges, both of words 
and things, were obliterated and gone; it was 



262 MATERIAL CAUSES OF DREAMS. 

found necessary for her to learn every thing again. 
She even acquired by new efforts the art of spell- 
ing, reading, writing, and calculating, and gradu- 
ally became acquainted with the persons and ob- 
jects around, like a being for the first time brought 
into the world. In these exercises she made con- 
siderable proficiency ; but, after a few months, an- 
other fit of somnolency invaded her. On rousing 
from it, she found herself restored to the state she 
was in before tfie first paroxysm ; but she was whol- 
ly ignorant of every event and occurrence that had 
befallen her afterward. The former condition of 
her existence she now calls the old state, and the 
latter the new state ; and she is as unconscious of 
her double character as two distinct persons are of 
their respective natures. For example, in her old 
state she possesses all her original knowledge ; in 
her new state, only what she acquired since. If a 
lady or gentleman be introduced to her in the old 
state, and vice versa (so, indeed, of all other matters), 
to know them satisfactorily, she must leam them in 
both states. In the old state she possesses fine 
powers of penmanship, while in the new she writes 
a poor, awkward hand, not having had time or 
means to become expert ! During four years and 
upward she has had periodical transitions from one 
of these states to the other. The alterations are 
always consequent upon a long and sound sleep. 
Both the lady and her family are now capable of 
conducting the affair without embarrassment ; by 
simply knowing whether she is in the old or new 
state, they regulate the intercourse, and govern 
themselves accordingly !" 

Other instances are more protracted, the im- 
pressions previous to a certain moment only being 
capable of renewal. 

Mrs. S , an intelligent lady, belonging to a 



MATERIAL CAUSES OF DREAMS. 263 

respectable family in the State of New-York, some 
years ago undertook a piece of fine needlework. 
She devoted her time to it almost constantly for a 
number of days ; but, before she had completed it, 
she became suddenly delirious. In this state, with- 
out experiencing any material abatement of her 
disease, she continued for about seven years, when 
her reason was suddenly restored. One of the first 
questions which she asked on this convalescence re- 
lated to her needlework. It is a remarkable fact 
that, during the long continuance of her delirium, 
she said nothing, so far as was recollected, about 
her needlework, nor concerning any such subjects 
as usually occupied her attention when in health. 

We read in Dr. Abercrombie of a lady reduced 
by disease, in whose mind the memory of ten years 
was lost. " Her ideas were consistent with each 
other, but they referred to things as they stood be- 
fore her removal (to Edinburgh)." 

In these instances it is probable that the fault 
may be referred to the original impression, some 
disorder or state of the brain causing it to be only 
superficially impressed during these ten years of 
oblivion. 

There is a curious story in the History of the 
Royal Academy of Sciences, which Beattie has re- 
corded in these words : 

" A nobleman of Lausanne, as he was giving or- 
ders to a servant, suddenly lost his speech and all 
his senses. Different remedies were tried, without 
effect, for six months ; during all which time he 
appeared to be in a deep sleep or deliquium, with 
various symptoms at different periods, which are 
particularly specified in the narration. At last, af- 
ter some chirurgical operations, at the end of six 
months his speech and senses were suddenly re- 
stored. When he recovered, the servant to whom 



264 MATERIAL CAUSES OP DREAMS. 

he had been giving orders when he was first seiz- 
ed with the distemper, happening to be in the 
room, he asked whether he had executed his com- 
mission ; not being sensible, it seems, that any in- 
terval of time, except, perhaps, a very short one, 
had elapsed during his illness." 

Ida. I have read two stories of melancholy ro- 
mance, which are not mal-a-propos to your argu- 
ments, Evelyn, in which the memory of one intense 
impression has " gone into a being," influencing 
the current of every after thought, and the mind 
seeming ever after unconscious of all past or pres- 
ent but the incident of one moment. 

A gentleman, on the point of marriage, left his 
intended bride for a short time. He usually trav- 
elled in the stage-coach to the place of her abode ; 
but the last journey he took from her was the last 
of his life. Anxiously expecting his return, she 
went to meet the vehicle, when an old friend an- 
nounced to her the death of her lover. She utter- 
ed an involuntary scream, and one piteous excla- 
mation, " He is dead !" From this fatal moment, 
for fifty years, has this unfortunate female daily, 
in all seasons, traversed the distance of a few miles 
to the spot where she expected her future husband 
to alight from the coach, uttering, in a plaintive 
tone, "He is not come yet; I will return to-mor- 
row." 

A young clergyman, on the eve of marriage, re- 
ceived a severe injury. During his future life of 
celibacy, which was protracted to the 80th year, 
this one idea only possessed his mind, that his hour 
of happiness was approaching, and, to the last mo- 
ment, he talked of his marriage with all the passion 
of a devoted lover. 

Ev. Thanks to your own memory, Ida, for these 
incidents. That the possession of the faculty of 



MATERIAL CAUSES OF DREAMS. 265 

this impression of memory can be demonstrated, we 
might doubt, were verbal description only employ- 
ed ; but when we see the artist trace the features 
of a person long lost to us from memory, we know 
that such ideas existed, and were then re-excited in 
his mind. 

The power of the intellect in retaining these 
impressions is wonderful. Cyrus is said to have 
remembered the names of all his soldiers, and The- 
mistocles those of two thousand Athenians. 

We have records from Seneca and others, that 
some will remember, after one perusal or hearing, 
very long poems, and even have repeated, word 
for word, the unconnected jumble of a newspaper. 
Pascal, as we are told by Locke, never forgot any- 
thing. Almost equally retentive was the memory 
of my excellent teacher, Sir Astley Cooper, and 
hence his nearly unexampled accumulation of facts. 
The memory of Ben Jonson was retentive to per- 
fection until the fortieth year of his age. In his 
youth he could repeat an entire volume after its 
perusal ; nay, even the whole of his own works, or, 
as he quaintly writes, "All that ever I made." 
We know that Bloomfield composed his "Farmer's 
Boy" in the bustle of a shoe manufactory, and 
wrote from his memory. 

Astr. I have heard that the particles of the body 
are constantly changing ; if so, how can memory 
exist in the brain 1 

Ev. The answer is easy. Because particles of 
exact similarity are deposited as others are remo- 
ved ; the parts thus regenerated, of whatever struc- 
ture they may be, still being identical and unchan- 
ged in function. 

If the dream be an inspiration, Astrophel, it is 
like " a spirit of the past," and does not " speak 
like sibyls of the future." 
Z 



266 MATERIAL CAUSES OF DREAMS. 

But, ere I offer some analogies of waking mem- 
ory in illustration of the causes of the dream, I 
must again fatigue you by a glance at the physiol- 
ogy of memory; the origin or mode of impression 
of a sense, and the mode of recurrence of such im- 
pression, i. e., the excitement of the dream. 

Aristotle has asserted that senses cannot receive 
material objects, but only their species, or eiSojXov; 
and Mr. Locke entertained the same idea; for this 
effect, however, matter must have touched a sense, 
and its impression, as Baron Haller thought, must 
have been mechanical ; for instance, the rays ema- 
nating from a body, and impinging on the retina, 
or an undulation of sound on the labyrinth of the 
ear, stamp an image on the brain, by which (in ac- 
cordance with a prior observation on illusion) some 
minute change is inevitably effected, some minute 
cerebral atoms are displaced. 

j* If you propose to me that curious physiological 
question, in what consists the function of a nerve — 
in oscillation, or in undulation of a fluid, in elec- 
tricity, or in magnetism ] or how the nerve carries 
this impression to the brain % or if you desire me 
to meet the subtle objection which Dr. Reid advan- 
ced against the opinion of Aristotle and the more 
modern psychologists, I might weary you with con- 
jectures like those of Newton and Hartley, that 
some ethereal fluid was, by the impulse of peculiar 
stimulus to its nerve, the cause of the senses ; or 
that the mental phenomena are an imparting, or 
influence of the immaterial soul by corporeal vibra- 
tion ; or that dreams are " motions of fibres /" and 
at length, with humility, confess this to be a mys- 
tery we cannot yet fathom. And this I do the 
more willingly, as it may prove my devotion to the 
proper limits of our study ; moreover, the question 
itself is not essential to my argument. 



MATERIAL CAUSES OF DREAMS. 267 

Yet it is certain that external impressions of ev- 
ery object or subject reach the brain through the 
medium of a nerve, and when the same fibrils of 
those nerves, or that spot of brain on which the 
original image rested, are again irritated by their 
proper stimulus, or by the same or a similar body, 
an association is 'produced, and memory is the result. 

For the ensurance of this sense of touch, and 
feeling, and perception, it is essential that the im- 
pression at the end of a nerve shall be perfectly 
transmitted along its course to the brain, so that 
the brain shall be conscious, or sensible of this im- 
pression ; for if a nerve be cut asunder, or a lig- 
ature be placed on any portion of it between the 
skin and the brain, the sensation instantly ceases. 
It is not essential, however, that the contact should 
take place at the moment of the perception ; and 
the explanation of this involves one of the most 
curious phenomena of the body's feeling, and, 
indeed, the metaphysical mystery of the nature of 
memory, which is too abstruse a point to be touch- 
ed by us here. After amputation, the patient may 
still complain of pain, and heat, and coldira the dis- 
severed limb ; he experiences the memory of a 
sensation; he feels, as it were, the ghost of his arm 
or leg. On the night succeeding the operation, the 
groaning patient has often cried out to me with 
pain in the toe or finger of that limb ; and when 
he is moved or shifts his position, he will attempt 
to hold his leg, or will beg his nurse to take care 
that she does not touch or run against it. Nay, I 
have frequently, on asking a patient how he felt, 
even after the lapse of many months from the oper- 
ation, been answered that he was well, but had not 
lost the pain in his leg ; or that his leg or his arm 
were lying by his side, when, perhaps, the limb 
was undergoing the Drocess of maceration in the 



268 MATERIAL CAUSES OF DREAMS. 

dissecting-room, or the bones were bleached and 
dangling in the museum. 

The pain, or common feeling of the limb, has 
stamped an image or eidolon on the brain which is 
not easily effaced ; there remains an internal sen- 
sibility on this point of memory. If the subject be 
subsequently presented to the mind by a touch at 
the end of the stump, or even by a thought, the 
idea of the limb that had lain dormant will be re- 
excited by that wondrous sympathy of brain and 
nerve, and the result will be a consciousness of 
having once possessed, or of having experienced a 
pain in this leg. 

And on this principle of the force of memory we 
may explain many of our excited feelings : those 
which remain after we have been wafted in a boat, 
or rolled along in a carriage, or whirled aloft in a 
swing ; the nervous impression in the brain is re- 
excited ere it was exhausted. 

Now an image may be stamped on the brain in 
a tumult without our cognizance or perception, 
and then revived in slumber ; we wake in wonder 
at having seen what we never saw or thought of 
before. Such is the dream of Lovel, in the " An- 
tiquary ;" and such the rationale of that tale of 
mystery respecting the <£6 in the Glasgow Bank, 
which a dream seems certainly to have developed. 

And it is evident that these impressions may re- 
cur the easier in slumber, because there is no fresh 
impression on the senses to produce confusion. 
But then all these images may be presented at one 
time, so that we may have either a chaos or a 
correct concatenation — an incident, which Hobbes 
and other early metaphysicians confess to be inex- 
plicable to tliem. 

In the words of Spurzheim, " Memory is the re- 
production of a conception ;" and Gall believed 



INTENSE IMPRESSION. MEMORY. 269 

that u Remembrance is the faculty of recollecting 
that we have perceived impressions ; and memory, 
the recollection of the impressions themselves, ," 

I read that Esquirol has drawn a distinction be- 
tween hallucination and illusion; the first is from 
within, the second from without. The argument 
I have adduced of memory and impression — the 
one at the beginning, the other at the end of nerves 
— will, I think, illustrate this perfectly. Halluci- 
nation, being internal, is of the past ; illusion, ex- 
ternal, of the present. 

Another metaphysician, Bayle, it is clear, was 
not ignorant of the basis of phrenology, or of this 
difference, when he alludes to " certain places on 
the brain on which the image of an object, which 
has no real existence out of ourselves, might be 
excited." 



INTENSE IMPRESSION.— MEMORY. 

" The dream's here still : even when I wake, it is 
Without me as within me ; not imagined, felt." 

Cymbeline 

Ev. I believe, then, that waking and slumbering 
association is memory ; and I have interposed the 
glimpse of metaphysics to break the monotony of 
my illustrations, for they are not yet exhausted. 

A gentleman, as we read in Dr. Pritchard's work, 
was confined, after a severe accident, for several 
weeks, and the accident was not once, during this 
period, remembered by him ; but, on his conva- 
lescence, he rode again over the same ground, and 
all the circumstances instantly flashed across his 
mind. 

In their youth, Dr. Rush escorted a lady, on a 
holyday, to see an eagle's nest. Many years af- 
terward, he was called to attend her in the acute 
Z2 



270 INTENSE IMPRESSION. MEMORY. 

stage of typhus ; and, on his entrance into her 
chamber, she instantly screamed out, " Eagle's 
nest !" and, it is said, from this moment the fever 
"began to decline. 

We ourselves have witnessed these flashes of 
memory more than once during the acuteness of 
brain fever, where journeys, and stories, and stud- 
ies have been renewed after they had been long 
forgotten. 

There are many romantic incidents in illustra- 
tion which have been beautifully wrought into a 
poem, or drama, as that play of Kotzebue, written 
to illustrate the happy success of the Abbe de 
l'Epee in France, in imparting knowledge and re- 
ceiving sentiments from the deaf and dumb. In 
this, the young Count Solar, by gestures, unfolds, 
step by step, his birthplace, and at length screams 
with joy, as he stands before the palace of his an- 
cestors. 

Then there is the story of little Montague, who 
was decoyed by the chimney-sweep. Some time 
after this, the child was engaged to clean the chim- 
ney of a mansion, and, descending into a chamber, 
which had been, indeed, his own nursery, lay down, 
in his sooty clothes, on the quilt, and by this happy 
memory discovered his aristocratic birth. This is 
the incident which still enlivens the pageantry of 
May-day. 

These reminiscences will occur sometimes in the 
most sudden and unexpected manner. In one of 
the American journals we are told of a clergyman 
who, at the termination of some depressing malady, 
had completely lost his memory. His mind was a 
blank, and he had, in fact, to begin the world ot 
literature again. Among other of his studies was 
the Latin language. During his classical readings 
with his brother, he one day suddenly struck his 



INTENSE IMPRESSION. MEMORY. 271 

head with his hand, and stated that he had a most 
peculiar feeling, and was convinced that he had 
learned all this before. 

Boerhaave, in his " Prelectiones Academic. In- 
stitut. Med.," relates the case of a Spanish tragic 
writer, whose memory, subsequently to an acute 
febrile disease, was so completely impaired, that 
not Only the literature of various languages he had 
studied was lost to him, but also their elements, 
the alphabets. When even his own poetic com- 
positions were read to him, he denied himself to be 
the author. But the most interesting feature of 
the case is this : that, on becoming again a votary 
of the Muse, his recent compositions so intimately 
resembled his original productions in style and 
sentiment, that he no longer doubted that both 
were the offspring of his own imagination. 

Even Priestley's master-mind was sometimes 
sleeping thus, being subject (to quote his own 
words) " to humbling failures of recollection ;" so 
that he lost all ideas of things and persons, and had 
so forgotten his own writings, that, on the perusal 
of a work, he sat himself to make experiments on 
points which lie had already illustrated, but on 
which his mind was then a " tabula rasa" 

Above all, the superlative memory of Sir Walter 
lay in a deep sleep after a severe indisposition. 
It is recorded by Ballantyne, that when " the Bride 
of Lammermoor, in its printed form, was submit- 
ted to his perusal, he did not recognise, as his own, 
one single incident, character, or conversation it 
contained ; yet the original tradition was perfect 
in his mind. When Mrs. Arkwright, too, sung 
some verses of his, one evening, at Lord Francis 
Egerton's, the same oblivion was o'er his mind, 
and he whispered to Lockhart, 'Capital words; 
whose are they ] Byron's, I suppose ; but I don't 
remember them.' " 



272 INTENSE IMPRESSION. MEMORY. 

My friend Dr. Copland informed me (in May, 

1839) of a lady of fifteen, Miss D- , who, in 

consequence of extreme exhaustion from disorder, 
forgot all her accomplishments, and had to begin 
her education afresh. 

The Countess of Laval had, in her childhood, 
been taught the Armorican of Lower Brittany 
(which is a dialet of the Welsh), but had, as she 
believed, forgotten it. On attaining the adult pe- 
riod, this lady had an acute fever, and, during her 
delirium, she ceased to speak in her native lan- 
guage, and chattered fluently in the bastard Welsh. 

A foreign gentleman, as we were told by Mr. 
Abernethy, after an accident on the head, spoke 
French only, and quite forgot the English, which 
he had before this spoken very fluently. 

A Welsh patient in St. Thomas's Hospital, some 
years since, having received an injury, began to 
speak in Welsh, and ever after continued to do so, 
although before his accident he constantly convers- 
ed in English. 

On the contrary, we learn from Dr. Pritchard 
of a lady who, after a fit of apoplexy, forgot her 
original language (the English) and spoke only in 
French, so that her nurses and servants conversed 
with her only by interpreters. 

There may be a partial derangement of memo- 
ry, one set of impressions only being erased. 

A friend of Dr. Beattie, in consequence of a 
blow on the head, lost only his attainments in 
Greek ; and Professor Scarpa (whose corpus stria- 
tum was disorganized) lost only the memory of 
proper names. 

You may now comprehend how instantaneously 
material impressions derange and destroy memory, 
and its converse, the production of memory by mate- 
rial impressions, will be far less mysterious to you. 






INTENSE IMPRESSION. MEMORY. 273 

But creatures to which the gift of intellect is not 
granted, in which innate ideas cannot arise, still 
evince the faculty of memory. It is, therefore, 
possible that fish and insects, possessing memory, 
dream. Of course the doctrines of Pythagoras, 
and Simonides, and the story of the interpretation 
of the language of birds by the vizier of Sultan 
Mahmoud, are mere fables, and the cackling of 
the Roman geese was accidental; yet the bird 
does possess the memory of language, and the 
power of imparting ideas. 

Nightingales' notes (as Bechstein has beautifully 
recorded them) seem to me like the Mexican lan- 
guage, and to express variety of sentiments of ado- 
ration and love. The parrot, magpie, jackdaw, 
jay, starling, and bulfinch are prattlers; and the 
exquisite little canary, the pupil of my friend Mrs. 

H , the pet, indeed, not only of its mistress, 

but of statesmen and learned physiologists, warbled 
its words in purest melody. From Sir "William 
Temple we learn the faculty of the wonderful par- 
rot of Prince Maurice of Nassau, at the Hague, 
that responded almost rationally to promiscuous 
questions. Granting, then, this faculty of memory, 
it is clear the bird may dream, and I may add one 
other quotation from the " Domestic Habits of 
Birds" in proof of this. 

" We have, however, heard some of these night- 
songs which were manifestly uttered while the bird 
was asleep, in the same way as we sometimes talk 
during sleep — a circumstance remarked by Dry- 
den, who says, 

" ' The little birds in dreams their songs repeat.' 

" We have even observed this in a wild bird. 

On the night of the 6th April, 1811, about ten 

o'clock, a dunncock {accentor modularis) was heard 

in a garden to go through its usual song more than 

18 



274 INTENSE IMPRESSION. MEMORY. 

a dozen times very faintly, but distinctly enough 
for the species to be recognised." The night was 
cold and frosty, but might it not be that the little 
musician was dreaming of summer and sunshine 1 
Aristotle, indeed, proposes the question whether 
animals hatched from eggs ever dream. Marc- 
grave, in reply, expressly says that his "parrot, 
Laura, often rose in the night, and prattled while 
half asleep." 

Among quadrupeds, it is probable that those 
which, by their half-reasoning instinct, approach 
nearest to the power of comparison, and those 
which, in contrast to the callous-Tioofed, possess an 
acuteness of feeling, and therefore the nearest ap- 
proximate intelligence, are the most prone to 
dream. 

Although we know nothing of the dreams of 
that very learned dog which Leibnitz assures us 
he saw, and which uttered an articulate language, 
and often enjoyed a chat with his master, yet of 
the slumbering visions of the canines I have many 
illustrations. Vic, a fat terrier, was a somniloquist. 
She would bark, and laugh, and run round the 
room, or against tables ; the surest proof of som- 
nambulism. Indeed, dogs are celebrated by many 
poets for their dreaming propensities. Ennius 
writes : 

" Et canis in somnis leporis vestigia latrat." 

And Lucretius has left us a very comprehensive 
poetical account of the dreams of brutes. 

Even Chaucer refers to these dreams ; and in 

the Hall of Branksome, 

" The stag-hound, weary with the chace, 
Urged in dreams the forest race." 

It is probable that the dreams of brutes are very 
slwrt. 

From simple, unassociated memory, too, springs 



INTENSE IMPRESSION. MEMORY. 275 

the dream of the infant, pure and innocent as the 
thought of a cherub ; for delight is the common 
feeling of a dreaming child ; and when its lips are 
touched in sleep, the memory of its mother's bo- 
som will excite its lips and tongue to the congenial 
action of suction, though a fright of the previous 
day will change its slumbers into moments of ter- 
ror, and it will murmur and cry in its dream. 

I believe it is Sir H. "Wotton who lays much 
stress on the adoption of flans of education for a 
child, grounded on the discovery of its secret 
thoughts during its simple somniloquent dream. 

Cast. It is wonderful how vividly are revived 
in our dream those scenes of our early life which 
our waking efforts could not recollect. 

This did not escape Chaucer, as I remember in 

Dryden's version of a fable : 

" Sometimes forgotten things, long cast behind, 
Rush forward in the brain, and come to mind. 
The nurse's legends are for truths receiv'd, 
And the man dreams but what the boy believ'd. 
Sometimes we but rehearse a former play, 
The night restores our actions done by day." 

Ev. Yet do not associate this brilliancy of infan- 
tine reminiscence with vigour of the thought. The 
brain in children is, as it were, like wax, easily 
impressible. And remember, the ideas of children 
are more resembling the imperfect associations of 
our dreams ; the tutorage of our advancing mind 
fills it with more serious and rational images char- 
acterized by judgment. 

The first impressions of childhood are bright 
as fancy, so that we think in waking more of 
things present ; but in dreams of things long agone 
there is, in fact, no complete oblivion in a healthy 
mind, for any one of our infantile impressions may 
chance to be brought to us in our dream. 

But if impression be intense, it may assimilate 



27G INTENSE IMPRESSION. MEMORY. 

that of childhood, and become as permanent. My 
friend, Dr. Uwins, told me of a patient who, in a 
joke, once amused himself by throwing stones at 
the gibbeted pirates on the bank of the Thames. 
An epileptic tendency succeeded; and ever after 
this, his dreams were of gibbets and chains, and 
to that degree that his judgment and philosophy 
were powerless in controlling his fears. 

And in the book of the Prussian Greding we 
read of J. C. V., a youth who, in his eighth year, 
had been attacked by a dog. His future, and, in- 
deed, nightly dreams, were of this creature, and 
these so intense as to reduce his health to a very 
low degree. 

Now it is easy to believe the period of slumber 
so limited that the subject of reflection shall not 
have disappeared, that the thought had scarcely 
time to cool : 

" Lateat scintillula forsan." 
Thus Moses Mendelssohn had all the sounds heard 
during the day reverberating in his slumbering 
mind. 

Or we may suppose that the idea last imprinted 
on the mind, or by which it had been exclusively 
occupied, and the thoughts which are so much mod- 
ified by our temperament, study, and contempla- 
tion, would be the first to influence as the mind 
awakened, ere the image of fresh objects had been 
again perceived. 

Sir Walter, in his diary, thus writes : " When I 
had in former times to fill up a passage in a poem, 
it was always when I first opened my eyes that 
the desired ideas thronged upon me. I am in the 
nabit of relying upon it, and saying to myself when 
I am at a loss, ' Never mind, we shall have it all at 
seven o'clock to-morrow morning.' " 

Warton, the professor of poetry at Oxford, after 



INTENSE IMPRESSION MEMORY. 277 

partaking of a Sunday dinner with a friend, repair- 
ed to his service at his church. On his way, he 
was powerfully saluted with a cry of " Live mack- 
erel." He slumbered in his pulpit during the 
singing of the psalm, and, on the organ ceasing, he 
arose, half awake, and instead of his solemn prayer, 
cried with a loud voice, " All alive, all alive oh !" 

I remember the story-tellers in the coffee-houses 
at Aleppo, as if aware of this last impression, used 
to run out when they perceived they had excited a 
deep interest. 

Ida. It is curious to hear, even by your own 
quotations, Evelyn, that poets have so revelled in 
the luxury of dreams, from Homer to Pope, chiefly 
employing them, however, as the materiel of their 
poesy. Have they condescended to glance at their 
causes 1 

Ev. Lucretius, Claudian, George Stepney, Dry- 
den, and a few others. Apropos as to causes. 

In the " Anatomy of Melancholy" we have the 
following quaint summary : " As Tully notes, for 
the most part our speeches in the daytime cause 
our fantasy to work upon the like in our sleep, 
so do men dream on such subjects they thought on 
last: 

" ' Somnia qua? mentes ludunt volitantibus umbris, 
Nee delubra deum nee ab aethere numina mittunt, 
Sed sibi quisque facit,' &c. 

For that cause, when Ptolemy, king of Egypt, had 
posed the seventy interpreters in order, and asked 
the nineteenth man what would make one sleep 
quietly in the night, he told him ' the best way 
was to have divine and celestial meditations, and 
to use honest actions in the daytime.' L od. Vives 
wonders how schoolmen could sleep quietly and 
were not terrified in the night, they had such mon- 
strous questions and thought of such terrible mat- 

A A 



278 INTENSE IMPRESSION. MEMORY. 

ters all day long. They had need, among the rest, 
to sacrifice to the god Morpheus, whom Philostra- 
tus paints in a white and black coat, with a horn, 
and ivory box full of dreams of the same colours, 
to signify good and bad." 

Cast. These are the manufacture, I presume, 
of two of those sons of sleep, born to him by a 
beautiful but erring grace, " Phantasus," or Fancy, 
and " Phobetor," or Terror. With the relations 
and illustrations of these good and bad dreams, the 
pages of both fiction and authentic history abound : 
another poetical batch of causes, Ida. Lucian ex- 
claims, 

" Sweet are the slumbers of the virtuous man, 
Oh Marcia ! I have seen thy god-like father — 
A kind, refreshing sleep is fallen upon him. 
I saw him stretched at ease, his fancy lost 
In pleasing dreams. As I drew near his couch, 
He smiled, and cried, ' Caesar, thou cans't not hurt me.' " 

Another poet writes thus : 

" But most we mark the wonders of her reign, 
When sleep has lock'd the senses in her chain : 
When sober judgment has his throne resign'd, 
She smiles away the chaos of the mind ; 
And, as warm fancy's bright elysium glows, 
From her each image springs, each colour flows. 
She is the sacred guest, th' immortal friend ; 
Oft seen o'er sleeping innocence to bend, 
In that dead hour of night, to silence giv'n, 
Whispering seraphic visions of her heav'n." 

Then Richmond exclaims, " My heart is very 

jocund in the remembrance of so fair a dream;" 

while the coward conscience of Richard thus 

speaks, 

" By the apostle Paul, shadows to-night 
Have struck more terror to the soul of Richard, 
Than could the substance of ten thousand soldiers." 

Aufidius thus recounts his slumbering memory 
of the prowess of Ooriolanus : 

1 This happy Rom this proud Marcius, haunts me. 
Each troubled ni t . when slaves and captives sleep, 



INTENSE IMPRESSION. MEMORY. 279 

Forgetful of their chains, I in my dreams 
Anew am vanquish'd ; and beneath his sword 
With horror sinking, feel a tenfold death — 
The death of honour." 

And yet another : 

" Though thy slumber may be deep, 
Yet thy spirit shall not sleep. 
T'aere are shades that will not vanish, 
There are thoughts thou canst not banish." 

And, lastly, Crabbe, in his " World of Dreams :" 

" That female fiend, why is she there ? 
Alas ! I know her. Oh, begone ! 
Why is that tainted bosom bare ? 
Why fixed on me that eye of stone ? 
Why have they left us thus alone ? 
I saw the deed — " 

Astr. You will drown us in a flood of Helicon, 
fair lady, if you thus dole out the thoughts of these 
maudlin poets. The records of national and do- 
mestic history, the dreams of the conqueror of 
thousands, and of the midnight assassin, are re- 
plete with incidents, if we will search for them, 
more impressive, ay, and more romantic, than all 
this rhyming ; and from the legends of history alone 
I could select a legion of dreaming mysteries 
which would dissolve all these finespun theories 
of Evelyn regarding the essence, as he terms it, of 
the dream. He must adopt a clearer course, in 
showing us his causes, than by harping on this fa- 
vourite theme of memory ; and We must listen 
through another moonlight ere we be made wiser 
by the unfolding of this grand secret of visions. 



280 INFLUENCE OF DARK BLOOD 

INFLUENCE OF DARK BLOOD IN THE 
BRAIN. 

" I talk of dreams, 
Which are the children of an idle brain." 

Romeo and Juliet. 

Ev. That I may explain to you the predisposition 
of a dream — in other words, the state of broken 
slumber — it is essential that I recur to the physiol- 
ogy of the brain ; and I must humble our pride 
by combining some of the debasing conditions of 
our nature, as influential on the divine mind, 
through the medium of its chambers of marrow ; 
for to the intimate condition and function of the 
brain and its nerves, and its contained blood, we 
must chiefly look for elucidation of the physical 
causes of a dream. 

Yet I may even grant you, for an argument, As- 
trophel, the flight of an immortal spirit, and all the 
amiable vagaries of Sir Thomas Brown, reserving 
to myself to prove at what moment we become con- 
scious of this flight. 

In natural actions there are ever three requisites, 
like the points of a syllogism 

1. A susceptibility of influence ; 

2. The influence itself; 

3. The effect of this influence : 

And these I call the predisposing, the exciting, 
and the proximate causes. 

1. The brain is brought to this susceptibility by 
excited temperament, study, intense and undivided 
thought ; in short, by any intense impression. 

2. The influence or excitement is applied ; con- 
gestion of blood producing impression on the ex- 
tremities, or origin of a nerve, at the period of de- 
parting or returning consciousness. At these pe- 
riods the blood changes, and I believe, as it chan- 



IN THE BRAIN. 281 

geSj the phenomena of mind, as in the waking 
state, obey these changes : rational and light dreams 
being the effect of circulation of scarlet blood ; dull 
and reasonless visions and " nightmare" that of 
crimson, or black blood. 

3. The effect of this influence is recurrence of 
idea, memory, more or less erroneously associated, 
as the blood approximates to the black or scarlet 
state, or as the brain itself is constituted. 

Now it is essential to the perfect function of the 
brain not only that it shall have a due supply of 
blood, but that this blood shall be of that quality 
we term oxygenated. If there be a simple defi- 
ciency of this scarlet blood, a state of sound, un 
disturbed sleep will ensue (slightly analogous to 
the condition of syncope, or fainting). This may 
be the consequence of any indirect impression, or 
the natural indication of that direct debility which 
we witness in early infancy, and in the " second 
childishness and mere oblivion" of old age. But 
this deficiency of arterial blood may be depending 
on a more positive cause, venous congestion, impe- 
ding its flow ; for in sleep, the breathing being 
slower, the blood becomes essentially darker. 
Even arterial blood itself will become, to a certain 
degree, carbonized by lentor, or stagnation. Ve- 
nous congestion and diminution of arterial circu- 
lation are not incompatible ; indeed, Dr. Aber- 
crombie reasons very ably on their relative nature, 
implying the necessity of some remora of venous 
circulation to supply that want or vacuum which 
the brain would otherwise experience from the 
deficiency of the current in the arterial system. 
Thus will the languid arterial circulation of the 
brain, which causes sleep in the first instance, pro- 
duce, secondarily, that congestion of blood in the 
veins and sinuses which shall reduce it to disturb- 
Aa2 



282 INFLUENCE OF DARK BLOOD 

ed slumber, and excite the dream. May we not 
account, on this principle, for the difficulty which 
many persons experience in falling into a second 
slumber when they have been disturbed in the 
first ? 

Ida. Combe, I believe, observed, through a hole 
in a fractured scull, that the brain was elevated du- 
ring an apparent dream. 

Ev. This is a matter of frequent observation 
with us. There was, in 1821, at Montpelier, a 
woman who had lost part of the scull, and the brain 
and its membranes lay bare. When she was in 
deep sleep the brain lay in the scull almost mo- 
tionless ; when she was dreaming it became ele- 
vated ; and when her dreams (proved by her rela- 
ting them when awake) were on vivid or animating 
subjects, but especially when she was awake, the 
brain was protruded through the cranial aperture. 

Blumenbach states that he himself witnessed in 
one person a sinking of the brain whenever he 
was asleep, and a swelling with blood when he 
awoke. David Hartley, therefore, may be half 
right and half wrong when he imputes dreams to 
an impediment to the flow of blood, a collapse of 
the ventricles, and a diminished quantity of their 
contained serum. 

We thus have not only a deficiency of proper 
stimulus, but a deleterious condition of the blood, 
which acts as a poison to the brain. In fatal cases 
of coma and delirium we observe deep red points, 
chiefly in the cineritious part of the brain, from 
this congestion of its vessels. Sound sleep is thus 
prevented, but the congestion of carbonized blood, 
acting as a sort of narcotic, depresses the energy 
of the brain so far as to prevent waking, inducing 
that middle state, drowsiness or slumber ; so that 
sleep may thus depend on congestion/>0W exhaus* 



IN THE BRAIN. 283 

tion ; and "spectral illusion" from congestion in 
that state short of slumber ; and insanity itself from 
congestion still more copious and permanent. 

From this results a disturbed condition of the 
brain ; it is irritated, not excited, by its healthy or 
proper stimulus ; and it follows that such derange- 
ment of the manifestations of mind ensues as we 
term a dream. Waking, however, soon takes 
place, and the blood is more scarlet, and the facul- 
ties themselves gradually awake. As this is more 
perfect, we remember the dream, and are enabled 
to explain it, and know that it was a dream. The 
mind is now restored, so that scarlet blood indicates 
healthy thought, and black blood its reverse. Your 
pardon for this prolixity and dulness. The healthy 
or unhealthy crisis of the blood is a most important 
subject in our argument, and too constantly slight- 
ed in the question of illusion. 

Monsieur Denis records the story of a young 
man of Paris, in the seventeenth century, who was 
cured of a stubborn and protracted lethargy by the 
transfusion of the arterial blood of a lamb ; and an- 
other of a recovery from madness by that of the ar- 
terial blood of a calf, and these in presence of men 
both of science and high quality. 

I do not affirm my implicit faith in this state- 
ment of the effect of gentle blood, but I am certain 
of the poisonous influence of that of another qual- 
ity ; and I will cite a passage from Hoffman, the 
German poet, whom Monsieur Poupon, in his " Il- 
lustrations of Phrenology," adduces as a specimen 
of marvellousness, ere I offer my cases. 

" Why do my thoughts, whether I am awake or 
asleep, always tend, in spite of all my efforts, to 
the gloomy subject of insanity ] It seems to me as 
if I felt my disordered ideas escaping from my 
mind like hot blood from a wounded vein." 



284 INFLUENCE OF DARK BLOOD 

This was figurative, but it was true ; for of itself 
this black blood may be suddenly the cause of fu- 
rious and fatal mania. When Dionis, in his 
" Cours d'Operations de Chirurgie," is referring to 
that operation that has lately, by its revival, occu- 
pied so much of the attention of the medical world 
(the process of transfusion), he says, " La fin fu- 
neste de ces malheureuses victimes de la nouveau- 
te, detruisit, en un jour, les hautes idees qu'ils 
avoient concues ; ils devinrent foux, furienx, et 
moururent ensuite." 

The relief of the brain, by the escape of this 
blood, is of deeper interest to science than the 
mere romancer may imagine. 

Sir Samuel Romilly was for a moment, I be- 
lieve, in a state of sanity, when blood had flowed 
from the divided vessels of his throat ; for he at- 
tempted, it appeared, to stop its flow by thrusting 
the towel with some force into the wound. 

So diseases of the heart, by keeping the black 
blood in the brain, predispose to dreaming. Du- 
ring the age of terror in France, organic diseases 
of the heart and cases of mania were most preva- 
lent. 

I may for a moment indulge in analogies regard- 
ing this arrest of the blood. Cases of inflammation 
of the ear are often seen in confirmed maniacs (the 
helix being usually the part most inflamed), and 
black blood often oozes from the part. 

M. Calmeil considers chronic phlegmasia of the 
brain as the cause of insanity, the derangement it- 
self being, as it were, the moral result or disease, 
and the organic changes or proximate cause the 
physical disease ; both being but the sequelee, or 
consequence of inflammation. 

A boy, the servant of a medical friend (Mr. 
A ), was, some years ago, placed under my 



IN THE BRAIN. 285 

care for fever, with delirium. About the acme of 
his disorder, the impetuosity of the blood in the 
vessels of the head was such as to project his ears 
prominently forward, like those of a satyr, or, as 
the gossips thought, rather of a demon. Yet all 
this subsided as the fever waned. 

Yet, believe me, I draw a decided distinction 
between mania and dreaming, though the phenom- 
ena may sometimes bear resemblance. In one es- 
sential point they differ : that the transient illusion 
is not manifested except during slumber, or a state 
closely analogous to it, when the senses are lan- 
guid, or asleep. It is true, however, the maniac 
will, on his recovery, often dream of the subject of 
his insanity, yet insanity is more exemplified by 
action, the dream being usually passive. 

The predisposition to insanity is often, too, he- 
reditary, so that the slightest moral influence, im- 
perceptible, perhaps, to the physician, may incite 
such a mind to madness ; for where there is no 
predisposition, that is, a perfect integrity of brain, 
a right judgment is evinced even under the potent 
influence of the passions. 

As the condition of insanity, so the illusive vision 
does not always primarily depend on medullary 
disease ; there are primary moral as well as phys- 
ical causes. But even the exertion of thought, 
which the ultra spiritualist may term an immaterial 
faculty, is attended by increased action on the mat- 
ter of the brain. The organ of mind will, if dis- 
eased (though not always), produce deranged ac- 
tions. Yet it is equally true, if even a sound 
brain be badly instructed, and its passion uncon- 
trolled, insanity may ensue, not, however, with- 
out quickly, I believe immediately, inducing struc- 
tural change. 

On one point, the dream and insanity are often 



286 INFLUENCE OF DARK BLOOD 

alike; they are mental fulfilments of a wish ; and 
the dreamer during his slumber, and the madman 
throughout his derangement, are presented with 
the spectra of their desires, and their hopes and 
fears become, for these periods, reality. 

It was with a reference to the wanderings of the 
understandiii in dreams that Sir James Mackin- 
tosh thus writes, in a letter to Robert Hall : 

" These will familiarize your mind to consider 
its other aberrations as only more rare than sleep 
and dreams, and in process of time they will cease 
to appear to you much more horrible." 

Astr. And pray, Evelyn, how doth all this pro- 
found prosing affect the subject of dreams % 

Ev. By similitude. I may even remind you, 
with devout veneration, of the dreams of a prophet, 
to prove the brain highly sensitive when these vis- 
ions are before it. Listen to the words of Daniel, 
to whom " God gave knowledge and skill in all 
learning and wisdom." 

" I, Daniel, was grieved in my spirit, in the 
midst of my body, and the visions of my head 
troubled me." 

"And I, Daniel, fainted, and was sick certain 
days." 

Even here, may we not believe that the Creator 
did not alter his law \ 

It was Dr. Cullen who first drew a parallel be- 
tween insanity and dreams. As some proof of his 
insight, we read in Lode of a man who never 
dreamed until he fell into a fever in the twenty- 
fifth year; in Beattie, of a young friend who never 
dreamed unless his health was deranged. 

And Mr. Locke thus writes : " I once knew a 
man who was bred a scholar, and had no bad 
memory, who told me that he had never dreamed 
in his life until he had fever." 



IN THE BRAIN. 287 

This immunity from dreams is also most marked 
in savages, unless during disorder, or at the dying 
moment. Ulloa, Humboldt, and La Condamine 
all agree as to the character of indolence and ab- 
sence of thought and fancy in the native Americans, 
and it is as sure that they seldom dream. 

Now, whatever influence tends to arrest or de- 
range the upper circulation of the blood in its return 
to the heart, or to detain it in the vessels of the 
brain, or which presses on an important nerve, so 
as to disturb the function of the brain or spinal 
cord by continuous sympathy, may be the remote 
cause of the phenomena of dreaming. 

Such are the results of repletion, dyspepsia^ the 
supine position, &c, &c. 

And here, Astrophel, I meet your metaphysician. 

Galen, and indeed the ancients generally, attrib- 
uted dreams chiefly to indigestion, but referred 
their immediate excitement to fumes and vapours 
instead of to nervous influence, or cerebral conges- 
tion from interrupted circulation. 

Cast. And here, Evelyn, courtesy might have 

prompted you to meet my poets. Let me see — is 

it not Dryden who writes of 

" Rising fumes of undigested food, 
And noxious humours that disturb the blood ?" 

And in a poem believed to have been written by 

Chaucer there is this passage : can I remember his 

quaintness ] 

" I supposed yt to have been some noxiall fantasy, 
As fallyth in dremes, in parties of the nyght, 
Which cometh of joy or grievous malady ; 
Or of robuste metes which causeth grete myght ; 
Overmoche replet obscuryth the syght 
Of natural reasonne, and causyth idyll thowght, 
Makyth the body hevy where hyt was lyght." 

And again, in the tale of the " Nonnes Preest :" 

" Swevenes (dreams) engendren of repletions, 
And oft of fume and of complexions, 



288 INFLUENCE OF DARK BLOOD 

When humours ben to habundant in a wight. 

Of other humours cou'd I telle also, 

That werken many a man in slepe moch wo," &c. 

Ev. I sit reproved, fair lady. Herodotus also 
says, the Atlantes never dream ; which Montaigne 
refers to their never eating anything which has 
died of itself. And Burton thus sums up his pre- 
cepts of prevention : 

" Against fearful and troublesome dreams, in- 
cubus, and inconveniences wherewith melancholy 
men are molested, the best remedy is to eat a light 
supper and of such meats as are easie of diges- 
tion, no hare, venison, beef, &c. ; not to lie on his 
back," &c. 

Dryden, to ensure his brilliant visions of poesy, 
ate raw flesh ; and Mrs. Radcliffe, I am told, adopt- 
ed the same plan. We know that green tea and 
coffee, if we do sleep, induce dreaming ; and Bap- 
tista Porta, for procuring quiet rest and pleasing 
dreams, swallowed horse-tongue after supper. 

Indigestion, and that condition which is termed 
a weak or irritable stomach, constitute a most fruit- 
ful source of visions. The immediate or direct in- 
fluence of repletion, in totally altering the sensa- 
tions and the disposition in waking moments, is a 
proof of its power to derange the circulation of the 
brain and the mental faculties in sleep. 

" Somnus ut sit levis, sit tibi ccEna brevis." 

The influence of the great sympathetic nerve in 
this respect is very important. With many per- 
sons, a meal is usually followed by feelings of de- 
pression, impaired memory, unusual timidity, de- 
spondency, and other illusive characteristics of hys- 
teria and hypochondriasis. And events will appear 
of the greatest moment, which, after the lapse of 
some hours, will be considered mere trifles ; so 
that, after all, there is some truth in the idea of 



IN THE BRAIN. 289 

that arcJiceus, or great spirit, asserted by Van Hel- 
mont to sit at the cardia of the stomach, and regu- 
late almost all the other organs. 

The posture of supination will unavoidably in- 
duce that increased flow of blood to the brain 
which, under certain states of this fluid, is so essen- 
tial to the production of brilliant waking thoughts ; 
an end, indeed, attained so often by another mode 
— the swallowing of opium. 

A gentleman of high attainment was constantly 
haunted by a spectre when he retired to rest, which 
seemed to attempt his life. When he raised him- 
self in bed, the phantom vanished, but reappeared 
as he resumed the recumbent posture. 

Some persons always retire to bed when they 
wish to think ; and it is well known that Pope was 
often wont to ring for pens, ink, and paper in the 
night, at Lord Bolingbroke's, that he might record, 
ere it was lost, that most sublime or fanciful poesy 
which flashed through his brain as he lay in bed. 
Such, also, was the propensity of Margaret, duch- 
ess of Newcastle, who (according to Cibber, or, 
rather, Sheil, the real author of the " Lives of the 
Poets") "kept a great many young ladies about 
her person, who occasionally wrote what she dic- 
tated. Some of them slept in a room contiguous 
to that in which her grace lay, and were ready, at 
the call of her bell, to rise any hour of the night to 
write down her conceptions, lest they should escape 
her memory." 

Henricus ab Heeres (in his " Obs. Med.") says 
that, when he was a professor, he used to rise in 
the night, open his desk, compose much, shut his 
desk, and again to bed. On his waking he was 
conscious of nothing but the happy result of his 
compositions. 

The engineer Brindley even retired to bed for 
19 Bb 



290 INFLUENCE OF DARK BLOOD 

a day or two when he was reflecting on a grand 
or scientific project. 

I deny not that the darkness or stillness of night 
may have had some influence during this inspira- 
tion. I may also allow that some few individuals 
compose best while they are walking ; but this 
peripatetic exertion is calculated, itself, to produce 
what we term determination of blood to the head. 
I have heard of a most remarkable instance of the 
power of position in influencing mental energy, in 
a German student, who was accustomed to study 
and compose with his head on the ground and his 
feet elevated, and resting against the wall. 

And this is the fragment of a passage from Tis- 
sot on the subject of monomania : 

" Nous avons vu etudier dans cette academie i-1 
n'y a pas long-tems, un jeune homme de merite, 
qui s'etant mis dans la tete, de decouvrir la quad- 
rature du circle, est mort, fou, a l'hotel Dieu, a 
Paris." 

You will smile when I tell you that the tints of 
the landscape are brighter to our eyes if we reverse 
the position of the head. 

And now, with your leave, gentle ladies, I will 
bring phrenology to my aid. 

If we assume that there may be distinct portions 
of the brain, organs of comparison, individuality, 
causality, &c, we naturally regard them as the 
source of that combined faculty which we denomi- 
nate judgment. We might argue that, if these or- 
gans were permanently deficient, fatuity, or, at 
least, extreme folly, would be the result. By par- 
ity of reasoning we might infer, that if the function 
of such organs were for a time suspended, imagina- 
tion, having lost its mentor, would, as it were, run 
wild, and an extravagant dream, granting an ex- 
citement, would be the result. If the organ of col- 



IN THE BRAIN. 291 

our be excited, and form be asleep, we may have 
an eccentric drawing. If language and imagination 
are both awake, a poem or romance ; so it may 
chance that, if all the proper organs are awake, 
there may be a rational dream. 

I yield not to the too finely-spun hypotheses of 
Gall, and his first whimsical topography of the 
cranium ; the incipient idea of which, by-the-by, 
he owes to the Arabian phrenologists, who, even in 
the olden time, had glimpses, although they deci- 
ded on a different location. Imagination was in 
the frontal region, reason in the medial, and mem- 
ory in the occipital. 

In Dr. Spurzheim's beautiful demonstration of 
the brain, he exhibits it almost as one large con- 
voluted web. While the ultra-phrenologist is un- 
ravelling these convolutions, it is strange that he 
sees not the inconsistency of his cranial divisions. 
Some of the boundary lines of his organs must be 
drawn across these convolutions. It will ever be 
impossible to decide the exact course of these, but 
the lines should be drawn in the direction of their 
fibres ; for if the faculty be seated in one convolu- 
tion, that faculty would proceed in the course of its 
fibres, and not across the fissure from one lobule 
to another. Now the most frequent coincidence 
of the possession of great mental power, with full 
development of the frontal region of the scull, will 
naturally lead us to believe that it may depend on 
causation. Indeed a scull, as well as expression, 
may be phrenologically changed by culture or 
thought. The scull of William Godwin, in early 
life, indicated an intellectual development ; then it 
became sensual, the occipital organs being in ex- 
cess ; and again, as his mind was subject to more 
moral culture, the intellectual ox frontal again pre- 
vailed. I am informed, also, by Miss A , that 



292 



INFLUENCE OF DARK BLOOD 



there was observed a progressive development of 
the intellectual region in the head of her father, an 
acute and deep thinker. 

We have analogies to this in physiognomy. 
Caspar Hauser lost some of the negro fulness about 
his mouth after he had been introduced to society. 
Perhaps the contrasted beauty and deformity in 
the forehead and eye, and in the mouth of Sheri- 
dan, was a faithful indication of that paradox of 
mind which was never more perfectly displayed 
than in the intellectual dignity and moral deficiency 
of this man. As no function, then, either of brain 
or gland, can be carried on without a due supply 
of blood, it will follow that position may materially 
influence the integrity of these functions. The 
seat of the organs I have alluded to, if cranial de- 
velopment supports me, may be determined on the 
fore part of the head, behind the osfrontis, portions 
of the cerebral mass which, in the supine position, 
are usually most elevated above the centre of cir- 
culation. " The more noble the faculties, the 
higher are the organs situated." These, conse- 
quently, may endure a deficiency of stimulus, in 
comparison with other organs more favourably sit- 
uated. The phrenologist, then, will endeavour to 
prove that the supine position generally produces 
vascular pressure on particular parts or organs of 
the encephalon ; and he will argue that dreams 
arise from individual organs abstractedly or uncon- 
nectedly acting. There is one spot on the cranium, 
indeed, identified by Dr. Spurzheim as a most im- 
portant item in the composition of a good dreamer. 
He tells us that " persons who have the part above 
and a little behind the organ of ideality developed 
are much prone to mysticism, to see visions and 
ghosts, and to dream." 

It may not be difficult to believe in this partial 



IN THE BRAIN. 293 

function of the brain, when we recollect how often 
the loss of one faculty will be connected with par- 
alytic disorders. The faculty of perception may be 
lost, unless the impression cm the mind is made 
through a particular sense. Thus patients may be 
unable to comprehend that name or subject when 
it was pronounced, or related, which they will im- 
mediately do if written down and presented to the 
sight — the optic nerve may transmit while the audi- 
tory has lost its power. 

" Segnius irritant animos demissa per aures, 
Quam quae sunt oculis subjecta ridelibus." 

Of this axiom there is an illustrative story by 
Darwin, in his " Zoonomia." A paralytic man 
could see and hear, but the mind was conscious of 
vision only. If the hour of breakfast were named 
to him, he repeated it and was passive ; but if the 
hour were iwinted out on the watch, he compre- 
hended at once, and called for breakfast. 

On the contrary, there may be the same imper- 
fection of outward transmission ; the lingual nerves , 
influencing the tongue to sound a name inapplica- 
ble to the idea, the person often reversing the names 
of articles which he is continually using. 

These phenomena regarding nerves of sense, 
then, are strictly analogous to those which we rec- 
ognise in those parts of the brain which are inti- 
mately connected with, or influenced by these 
nerves of sense : thus, in analogy to waking illu- 
sions, we have the imperfect associations of a dream 
when the organs are irregularly acted on. 



294 INCUBUS, OR NIGHTMARE. 

INCUBUS, OR NIGHTMARE. 

" O'er ladies' lips, who straight on kisses dream." 

Romeo and Juliet. 
" Let us be lead within thy bosom, Richard, 
And weigh thee down." — King Richard III. 

Astr. I will no longer hesitate to grant that the 
dream occurs in the moment of departing or re- 
turning consciousness. Still, are you not reversing 
the order of these phenomena % may not the excite- 
ment of vague ideas in the mind be itself the cause 
of waking, and not the consequence of slumber, or 
half sleep % 

Ev. I believe not, except the sensibility of the 
body be influenced by touch, or sound, or by op- 
pressive congestions of blood in the brain, causing 
that state of disturbance which reduces sound sleep 
to slumber ; as in the instance of " Nightmare," 
which is to the mind what sensation is to the body, 
restoring it to a state of half- consciousness, essential 
to that sort of dreaming in which we make a pain- 
ful effort to relieve, and at last awake. 

Cast. Mara, by my fay ! the night-spectre of 
Scandinavia ; that evil spirit of the Runic theology, 
who weighed upon the bosom, and bereaved her 
victims of speech and motion : that oppressive 
dream, therefore, termed Hag-ridden, or, in the 
Anglo-Saxon, Elf-siderme. Is it not she of whom 
it is written, 

" We seem to run, and, destitute of force, 
Our sinking limbs forsake us in the course. 
In vain we heave for breath, in vain we cry ; 
The nerves unbraced, their usual strength deny, 
And on the tongue the faltering accents die." 

Ev. A very faithful picture. 

Sound sleep will often be broken by pain or un- 
easiness occurring in a particular part of the body; 
the dream will then often bear an instructive refer- 



INCUBUS, OR NIGHTMARE. 295 

ence to the seat and nature of such pain. If cramp 
has attacked any of the limbs, or the head has long 
been confined back, the dream may be enlivened 
by some analogous tortures in the dungeon of the 
Inquisition ; and it is curious that a waking wish 
for some relief from unpleasant sensations will be 
re-excited in the dream — a dreamy fulfilment. 
Captain Back, during one of the Arctic expedi- 
tions, when nearly in a state of starvation, often 
dreamed of indulging in a delicious repast. And 
Professor Stewart thus writes : " I have been told 
by a friend that, having occasion to apply a bottle 
of hot water to his feet, he dreamed that he was 
making a journey to the top of Mount ^Etna, and 
that he found the heat of the ground insupportable. 
Another, having a blister applied to the head, 
dreamed that he was scalped by a party of Indians." 

If on these occasions we are warm in bed, our 
dreams will be often pleasing, and the scenes in 
the tropics ; if cold or chilly, the reverse, and we 
shall believe ourselves in Zembla. 

Holcroft had been musing on the probabilities 
of life and death, and one night went in pain to 
bed. He dreamed his body was severed above 
his hips, and again joined in a surprising manner. 
He was astonished to think he was alive, and afraid 
of being struck, lest the parts should be dissevered. 

Tempests heard in a slumber will be often asso- 
ciated with a dream of shipwreck ; and some per- 
sons will dream of their having given pain to or in- 
jured others ; they wake, and find some close an- 
alogy to their own sensations. 

It is recorded that Cornelius Rufus dreamed that 
he was blind, and so, indeed, he awoke. 

In other cases we have the double touch, as it is 
termed ; dreams of forcible detention occur, and 
the sleeper has found that he had with one hand 



296 INCUBUS, OR NIGHTMARE. 

tightly grasped the other. If this hand had been 
moved in sleep unconsciously, the dream, no doubt, 
would have been essentially changed. And thus 
we have all the phenomena realized which Shaks- 
peare has referred to in the visitations of his in- 
corrigible Mab. 

Elliston was always awaked by nightmare when 
sleeping in a strange bed. 

As in some persons, by submitting the body to 
certain impressions during sleep, associated dreams 
may be produced at pleasure ; so, if the body or 
legs hang over the side of a bed, we may instantly 
dream of falling from a precipice ; and it is cu- 
rious that, under these illusions, we awake when 
we are past hope, and our despair is at its height; 
in falling, at the moment we are about to be dashed 
to atoms ; and in drowning, when the last bubbles 
are gurgling in the throat. 

When we read in the Bodleian, Astrophel, I 
will point you to other curious experiments of this 
sort by M. de Buzareingries. 

Sounds, also, may be partly associated with the 
dream at waking, and with reality when awake. 
Under this illusive impression, even murder has 
been innocently committed on one who waked, and 
stabbed his brother at the moment he was dream- 
ing of assassins. 

Cast. And so may be explained, I suppose, this 
funny anecdote. A young lover was drooping into 
a day-dream while sitting with his bi others and 
sisters, and his thought had turned on the cruelty 
of his mistress. He was for a moment dreaming 
of her, when pussy, stretching her paws, scratch- 
ed his leg with a claw : there was an instant asso- 
ciation, I presume, of the wound with the lady's 
cruelty, for he started and exclaimed, " Oh, Ara- 
bella, don't »" 






INCUBUS, OR NIGHTMARE. 297 

Ev. Hippocrates quaintly alludes to the dream- 
ing about seas and lakes as an indication of hydro- 
thorax, and to others as symptomatic of effusion 
on the brain ; and it has been asserted that gloomy 
dreams in fevers indicate danger. But all this is 
hypothesis ; indeed, the delirious dreams of fever 
are often bright and cheerful. 

The " Opium-eater" has a strange fancy regard- 
ing his dreams of " silvery expanses of water ;" 
" these haunted me so much, that I feared that 
some dropsical state or tendency of the brain might 
thus be making itself objective, and the sentient or- 
gan project itself as its own object." I hope you 
understand this, Astrophel ; I do not. 

In the morbid condition of hypochondriasis, which 
is a sort of permanent day mare, similar fancies are 
excited. Esquirol's patient at N6tre Dame thought 
the pope held council in her belly ; her intestines 
were found closely adherent together. Another 
monomaniac thought the devil had stretched a cord 
across her stomach ; her heart was adherent to its 
bag. Another believed that her body was stolen 
by the devil ; she was in reality paralytic, and in- 
sensible to blows or pricking. 

To explain some of these illusions, Jason Pra- 
tensis very gravely asserts that, " the devil being a 
slender, incomprehensible spirit, can easily insinu- 
ate and wind himself into human bodies, and, cun- 
ningly couched in our bowels, terrify our souls with 
fearful dreams." 

I may add that we see, in some, a delirious trans- 
migration of sensation. Parkinson relates these 
cases. One referred his own sensation to others, 
telling his nurse that his visiters were hungry, while 
his own voracity plainly indicated that the hunger 
was in himself. Another, in a fit of intoxication, 
insisted on undressing all his family, as they were 
drunk, and could not do it themselves. 



298 INCUBUS, OR NIGHTMARE. 

\ Now we certainly move ourselves unconsciously 
in our sleep as a relief from painful positions. If, 
however, these uneasy sensations are increased from 
stagnant blood about the heart and lungs, the op- 
pression is extreme, and loads the moving powers, 
producing a transient agony and an intense effort. 
If this were unsuccessful on the limbs and speech, 
the result would be often destructive. 

The nightmare dreamers are usually lethargic, 
and their ideas are often wild and visionary. 

Polidori, the author of the " Vampire," was a 
prey to nightmare ; he died with a laudanum bot- 
tle in his bed. And Coleridge might have thus 
left a sad and pointed moral, blazoning his wretch- 
ed suicide to that world which, unconsciously, has 
pored with a thrill of admiration over those fruits 
of his delinquency, the romantic and unearthly v 
stories of Christabel and the Ancient Mariner. ^v^Ji 

The grand feature of nightmare, then, is impedi- 
ment ; but how can I record all its varieties of mis- 
erable struggles ; of attacks and manglings from 
wild monsters ; of the rolling of mountains on the 
heart ; or the unhallowed embraces of a witch 1 

The young lady who reads mythology will fancy 
herself a syrinx, and struggle to escape from the 
amorous clutches of Pan. If we have been think- 
ing of Chamouni and her giant peaks of snow, we 
may be overwhelmed in our sleep by the fall of an 
avalanche; or we may be dashed off a precipice, 
and feel ourselves falling into interminable space 
without a hope of resting. 

A lady whom I know, and who is a frequent sub- 
ject of nightmare, is very uniform in this dreamy 
occupation. She is shaken to and fro in her bed 
by fiends, and the process seems to her to occupy 
considerable time. And there are many who are 
tortured by the feeling that they are buried alive, 



INCUBUS, OR NIGHTMARE. 299 

and attempt to cry out, and. beat against their coffin- 
lid in vain. Aurelian writes that the epidemics in 
Rome were premonished by incubus. 

These, and thousands of a similar kind, might 
be cited ; but a vivid imagination, with a hint or 
two, will readily create them at its pleasure. 

" A battalion of French soldiers, during the toils 
and dangers of a campaign, were marching on a cer- 
tain point on a most oppressive day, and at double 
the usual speed ; their strength was eight hundred 
men, all hardy, seasoned, and courageous ; care- 
less of danger, despising the devil, and little occu- 
pied with the thoughts of ghosts and phantasmago- 
ria. On the night of the occurrence in question, 
the battalion was forced to occupy a narrow and 
low building at Tropcea, barely calculated to ac- 
commodate three hundred persons. Nevertheless, 
they slept ; but at midnight, one and all were 
roused by frightful screams issuing from all quar- 
ters of the house, and to the eyes of the astonished 
and affrighted soldiers appeared the vision of a 
huge dog, which bounded in through the window, 
and rushed, with extraordinary heaviness and speed, 
over the breasts of the spectators. The soldiers 
quitted the building in terror. Next night, by the 
solicitations of the surgeon and chef de bataillon, 
who accompanied them, they again resumed their 
previous quarters. ' We saw,' says the narrator, 
* that they slept. We watched the arrival of the 
hour of the preceding panic, and midnight had 
scarcely struck when the veteran soldiers, for the 
second time, started to their feet. Again they had 
heard the supernatural voices, again the visionary 
hound had bestrode them to suffocation. The chef 
de bataillon and myself heard or saw nothing of 
these events.'" 

The superstitious thought this spectre to be the 



300 INCUBUS, OR NIGHTMARE. 

devil ; but the heat and carbonic acid gas were, I 
believe, enough for the excitement of the phantasm 
and the feeling. 

There can scarcely be imagined a more terrific 
feeling than this sense of extreme danger or diffi- 
culty, this intense impediment, without a power 
to avert it. The constant labour of Sisyphus, with 
his rolling-down stone, and the punishment of Tan- 
talus, would yield in severity to the agony of night- 
mare, but for its transient existence. 

It seems to me that this want of balance between 
will and power influences human nature so much, 
that life itself may be termed one long and painful 
incubus. The actions we perform seldom reach the 
perfection which the will desires. Hence arises 
that constant dissatisfaction, which even the close 
approach to perfection of some of the most accom- 
plished professors of art and science cannot avert. 

We must confess, with Socrates, that the extent 
of our knowledge is, indeed, but a conviction of 
our ignorance. The metaphor of Sir Isaac New- 
ton, on the insignificance of his own scientific at- 
tainments, is well known. Sir Joshua Reynolds 
so highly appreciated perfection in his art, that he 
was ever discontented with his own paintings, and 
frequently, as I have heard, by repeated touches, 
destroyed the effect of a picture which had been 
in its early stages beautiful. And Dr. Johnson, 
after astonishing the world with his perfect speci 
men of lexicographical composition, confessed that 
he " had not satisfied his own expectations." May 
I add to these the frequent discontent of the unri- 
valled Paganini ? 

Ida. The desire of the mind is, indeed, unlimit- 
ed ; and when this is intense, it wishes to appro- 
priate to itself all which it can comprehend. But 
disappointment must ensue ; for all wish to be the 



INCUBUS, OR NIGHTMARE. 301 

whole, when they form but a part. Thus will ever 
be proved the futility of worldly ambition — it is 
never satisfied. But the desires of religion are not 
a phantom or an incubus. True devotion, which 
aspires to heaven, as the hart panteth for the water- 
brooks, will never fail. Its fervent hopes and de- 
vout prayers, we believe, will be blessed by their 
accomplishment. 

Cast. Then the visitations of the incomparable 
Mab are naught but the infliction of the nightmare 1 
Gentle Master Evelyn, how I should be aweary 
of your philosophy, but that I am half won over to 
believe it true ] In good faith, 

" The Gordian knot of it you do unloose 
Familiar as your garter." 

Ev. Then, I pray you, let me counsel you not to 
court such visits, dear Castaly. There is some 
peril in the touch both of Mab and Mara ; for, al- 
though rare and transient cases of nightmare ex- 
cite no alarm, yet its repetition, in a severe form, 
is not to be slighted. It sometimes has been the 
forerunner of epilepsy ; its immediate cause being 
obstruction to the course of the blood by which the 
brain especially is surcharged, and the action of 
the lungs and heart impeded, as we prove by the 
extreme labour of breathing at the time we awake. 

I believe that there is usually a fulness of blood, 
also, in the vessels of the spinal marrow ; as, al- 
though nightmare may occur in the sitting, it is far 
more frequent in the recumbent position. Thus the 
marrow is oppressed, and there is then no force 
transmitted by the nerves to put the muscles into 
action. 

Distention of the stomach should be prevented, 

as the diaphragm is thus pushed up against the 

lungs, and the gas is accumulated in the cavit}'. 

All these conditions often occur in our waking 

Cc 



302 SOMNILOQUENCE. SOMNAMBULISM. 

moods, but then our judgment tells us how to re- 
lieve them speedily ; whereas, in sleep, the load ac- 
cumulates. All indigestible substances, therefore, 
should be avoided, as nuts, cucumbers, shell-fish, &c. 
Early and light suppers we advise to those whom 
Madame Mara so unmercifully overlies. A mat- 
tress should be our couch, and we should endeav- 
our to compose ourselves on one side, having, pre- 
vious to our rest, taken gentle exercise. 



SOMNILOQUENCE.— SOMNAMBULISM. 

" It is a sleepy language ; and thou speak 1 st 
Out of thy sleep." — Tempest. 
" Doct. You see her eyes are open. 
Gent. Ay, but their sense is shut." 
" A great perturbation in nature. To receive at once the ben- 
efit of sleep, and do the effect of watching." — Macbeth. 

Ev. In the common dream, ideas float through 
the mind, but the body is passive. When the 
power of expressing these ideas by speech is added, 
it is somniloquence. When there is the conscious, 
yet powerless will to move, it is incubus. When 
the unconscious power of moving in accordance with 
the ideas or wishes of the dream exists, it is som- 
nambulism. 

The common dreams of sleep are not unfolded 
to us until the waking recollections of the dreamer 
relate them ; but the matter of a dream may be 
half developed during its existence, by the curious 
propensity to unconscious talking and walking in 
the sleep. 

Sleep-talking is the slightest of these phenomena, 
and, indeed, closely resembles the speaking reveries 
of some absent people, and the raving of a maniac. 
The sleep is, at this time, little deeper than a revery. 

The voice of the somniloquist is usually natural^ 



SOMNILOaUENCE. 303 

but as again, in the cases of mania and of delirious 
excitement, a common voice may become sweetly- 
melodious, and there will be an imparted fluency 
allied to the inspiration of the improvisatore. 

Indeed, in some young ladies subject to hysteria, 
I have known, at certain periods, as it were, a new 
accomplishment, a style of singing which was far 
beyond their power in waking moments. Dr. 
Dewar relates a case of a girl who, when awake, 
discovered no knowledge of astronomy or the sci- 
ences in any way, but when she was asleep she 
would define the rotations of the seasons, using ex- 
pressions the most apt to the subject, such as " the 
globe is now set agee." It is probable that this 
was the memory in slumber of some geographical 
lesson which she had heard, but did not remember 
while her senses were active, that is, in her waking 
moments. And an American lady, during a fever, 
commenced a course of nocturnal prating, compo- 
sing most eloquent sermons, chiefly made up, how- 
ever, of remembered texts of Scripture. 

I am informed, too, that a lady of Edinburgh, 
during her somnolent attacks, recited somewhat 
lengthy poems ; and it was curious to notice that 
each line commenced with the final letter of the 
preceding. 

These sleep-talkings are sometimes the mere 
lispings of an idiot ; although Astrophel, perchance, 
may contend that the following, written down from 
the lips of a servant maid, is a proof of special in- 
spiration, converting a rustic girl into an improvis- 
atrice. 

" You may go home and wash your hose, 
And wipe the dew-drops from your nose, 

And mock no maiden here. 
For you tread down grass, and need not ; 
Wear your shoes, and speed not, 
And clout leather's very dear ; 
But I need not care, for my sweetheart 
Is a cobbler." 



304 SOMNILOaUENCE. 

I have heard this trash cited as a proof of facil- 
ity of composition in slumber. You do not believe 
it such ; like other specimens, it was a ruse of a 
wanton girl to excite admiration. In the magnetic 
somnambulism of Elizabeth Okey, that cunning lit- 
tle wench, who was the prima buffa of the magnetic 
farces enacted at the North London Hospital, would 
often skip about and sing snatches of equal ele- 
gance : 

" I went into a tailor's shop 
To buy a suit of clothes, 
But where the money came from, 
G — Almighty knows." 

These are, indeed, the very burlesque of somnilo- 
quence; and yet Okey was an invalid, and presu- 
med on the credulity of those who ministered to her. 

True somniloquence is often preceded by a cat- 
aleptic state ; and in girls like this, the senses are 
often so dull that the firing of a pistol close to the 
ear does not rouse them until the poetic fit is over. 

Cast. Were sleep-talking more common, it 
would, indeed, be a very dangerous propensity. If 
the confessor were to prate in his sleep of the pec- 
cadilloes of the fair penitents that kneel at his con- 
fessional, if the minister on his couch were to di- 
vulge his state secrets or his fine political schemes, 
where would be the tranquillity of domestic or na- 
tional society % Yet the lips of the love-sick maid- 
en have not seldom whispered in sleep her bosom's 
secret ; and sometimes the unconscious tongue has 
awfully betrayed even the blood stain on the hand. 

Thus did the ill-mated Parisina of Byron : 

" Fever'd in her sleep she seems, 
And red her cheek with troubled dreams ; 
And mutters she, in her unrest, 
A name she dare not breathe by day." 

The fate of Eugene Aram, I believe, may be 
imputed to such an unfortunate propensity ; and in 



somnambulisaM. 305 

Lady Macbetli's "Out, damned spot!" was con- 
fessed her participation in the murder of Duncan 
and the grooms. 

Somewhat like this, too, was the half-sleeping 
exclamation of Jarvis Match am after he had com- 
mitted the murder of the drummer boy. Starting 
from his bed when roused by the waiter, his first 
words were, " My God ! I did not kill him." 

Ev. A dream will sometimes half wake even a 
child to a state of terror, although children are with 
difficulty completely roused. I have known in- 
stances in which children would sit up in bed, with 
their eyes open, sobbing, and talking, and staring 
in a sort of trance ; nay, they will sometimes start 
from bed, but still asleep, and, after a time becom- 
ing calm, they have again composed themselves to 
slumber. 

I have known sleep-talkers who have not re- 
membered one iota of their wanderings when 
awake ; and even the ecstatic somnambulist, who 
pretends to prophesy wisdom, recollects nothing 
when the ecstasy is over. It is clear, also, that the 
mind varies in sleep and waking in regard to its 
memory ; for it has been proved that persons who 
often talk in their sleep have renewed the exact 
points of a subject which terminated their last sleep- 
talking, although, in the waking interval, it was to 
them oblivion. 

Somnambulism is the most perfect paradox among 
the phenomena of sleep, as it exhibits actions with- 
out a consciousness of them ; indeed, so complete 
a suspension of sensibility, that contact, nay, in- 
tense inflictions, do not produce that mental con-, 
sciousness which is calculated to excite alarm, or 
even attention. 

There is a somewhat remote analogy to this in 
the want of balance between the judgment and vo- 
20 C c 2 



306 SOMNAMBULISM. 

lition of ambitious minds. In the campaign of 
Russia, Napoleon's march was a sort of somnam- 
bulism, for he must have been madly excited to 
action against his better judgment. In this he 
forms a curious contrast with his royal predecessor; 
for in Louis XVI. we observe a mind that might 
conceive great things, but which volition hesitated 
to accomplish. 

The points of the mystery of somnambulism were 
never more forcibly illustrated, to my own mind, 
than in the following cases : 

In 1833, a man was brought before Alderman 
Thorp who had- a parcel cut from his arm, al- 
though he had strapped it tightly on to prevent 
this, as he was often falling asleep, even during 
his walk. Yet, even then, he usually took the par- 
cels to their proper directions. 

The crew of a revenue boat on the coast of Ire- 
land, about two o'clock in the morning, picked up 
a man swimming in the water. He had, it appear- 
ed, left his house about twelve, and walked two 
miles over a most dangerous path, and had swum 
about one mile. After he was taken into the boat, 
he could not be persuaded that he was not still in 
his warm bed at home. 

In 1834, Marie Pau was admitted into the hos- 
pital at Bordeaux, her left hand and arm covered 
with deep and bleeding gashes, its tendons project- 
ing, and the bones broken. She had, in her sleep, 
gone into a loft to cut wood with a hedging bill ; 
thinking she was cutting the wood, she had hack- 
ed her forearm and hand until she fainted away, 
and fell bathed in her blood. She had felt no pain, 
but merely had a sensation as if the parts were 
pricked with pins. 

Some time ago (I believe in the year 1832), a 
journal thus records a case analogous in its nature, 
although less unhappy in its effects : 



SOMNAMBULISM. 307 

" Some fishermen at Le Conquest, near Brest, 
were surprised at finding, at two o'clock in the 
morning, a boy about twelve years old up to his 
waist in the sea, fishing for flounders, of which he 
drew up five or six. Their surprise, however, was 
increased to wonder when, on approaching him, 
they found that he was fast asleep. He was taken 
home and put to bed, but was immediately after- 
ward attacked with a raging fever. 

Ida. These walkers were of low degree ; I pre- 
sume philosophy is not altogether exempt from 
the fault. 

Ev. Oh no : Galen was U somnambulist ; and 
Franklin assures us that, in a warm bath at South- 
ampton, he floated on his back nearly an hour in 
his sleep. 

Now that there is an apathy of the senses during 
somnambulism is clear, for the eyelids are unclosed, 
and if a candle be held to the eye of the somnam- 
bulist, the actions of the iris are seen, but there is 
seldom aversion of the head to avoid the glare. 
Was Mrs. Siddons aware of this when she smelt to 
her bloody hand, but did not look upon it? In 
sleep-walking, indeed, there is always one, at least, 
of the five senses asleep. The actions of somnam- 
bulists often appear almost automatic, without a 
reason for them ; somewhat resembling instinct, as 
the beaver will still build his dome for shelter 
even under a roof, or as monomaniacs will do a 
work in three or four different places, forgetful of 
their previous labour. It is evident, too, that there 
is a dulness of reflection when the progress is im- 
peded. The somnambulist will try to move on in 
a straight line, overturning things in his course : 
thus Mathews, in Somno, overturned the tables, 
but had not the judgment to go round them. Un- 
der very great obstruction to their ' progress, the 
somnambulists will sometimes burst into tears. 



308 SOMNAMBULISM. , 

Gall relates the case of a miller who every night 
got up and worked in his mill, asleep ; and Mar- 
tinet, of a saddler, who also worked nightly in his 
sleep ; and Dr. Pritchard, of one who had been 
subject to epileptic fits, thus : " They ceased en- 
tirely until the nineteenth year of his age, when he 
became a somnambulist, working during the night 
at his trade as a saddler, getting out on the roof of 
the house, going out to walk, and occupying himself 
in a thousand various ways. Soon after this the 
fits of epilepsy reappeared, occurring every five or 
six days, increasing in duration, and commencing 
from that time only with a sensation of heat, which, 
from the epigastrium, rapidly extended to the head, 
and produced complete insensibility. He was, at 
various times, relieved by bleeding; and, in the 
twenty-fourth year of his age, being then a soldier, 
he escaped three months without a return of his 
epilepsy. In the following year he was astonished 
to find himself one night on the roof of the house, 
w r et with rain ; the impression which he thence 
conceived produced, some time afterward, an at- 
tack of epilepsy, followed by contraction of his 
fingers and toes." 

In many cases, however, there is some predeter- 
minate motive for the walk which excites the mem- 
ory in the sleep. The somnambulist has been 
thinking deeply ere he retires to rest, and the walk 
occurs early in the night, so that we might believe 
a mood of musing had really prevented sleep, and 
itself been the cause of the phenomena. 

Thus may be explained the miracle recorded by 
Fulgosius. Marcus, the freedman of Pliny, dream- 
ed that a barber, sitting on his bed, had shaved 
him, and awoke well trimmed : Marcus had un- 
consciously shaved himself. 

And also other cases related by Dr. Pritchard, 
of which I will offer you a fragment. 



SOMNAMBULISM. 309 

" He is just recovering from a singular state of 
revery, in which he has passed twenty-four hours. 
It began in the evening with a rigour, which con- 
tinued more or less the whole night. From that 
time he remained constantly in motion, walking 
up and down the room or about the house. He 
kept his eyes open, but was unconscious of exter- 
nal impressions ; sometimes he muttered to him- 
self, and by his gestures and the motions of his 
hands it appeared that he fancied himself to be 
working' in his usual occupation. In this state he 
remained all the ensuing night and a part of the 
following day. During that time he never ate or 
drank anything in a natural manner; he some- 
times caught hold of a piece of bread, and, having 
bitten it hastily, threw it down, and drank in the 
same way, immediately continuing his work. If 
he was spoken to, he was some time without ta- 
king any notice, and then would reply hastily, as 
a person does who is disturbed by a question when 
in a revery." 

Our study of these curiosities of mind teaches 
us how intimately combined in their essence are 
all the species of illusion. 

Somnambulism is a very common feature in epi- 
leptic idiots. In confirmed insanity, also, we ob- 
serve, in an intense degree, that fearless daring 
and almost preternatural power which characterize 
somnambulism. A Highland woman, in a state 
of puerperal mania, which was increased by a ter- 
rific dream, escaped to the gorges of the mountain, 
and herded with the deer. She became so fleet 
of foot that it was impossible to overtake her. 
One day, an awful tempest drove her and her 
" velvet companions" to the valleys, when she was 
secured. Providence, which " tempers the wind 
to the shorn lamb," had covered her body with hair. 



310 SOMNAMBULISM. 

The dreamer walks and talks with imaginary- 
people — spectral illusion. The following is a per- 
fect illustration of this night-fantasy. It is a story- 
told to Sir Walter Scott by a Lisbon trader : 

" Somnambulism and other nocturnal deceptions 
lend their aid to the formation of such phantasmata 
as are formed in the middle state between sleep- 
ing and waking. A most respectable person, 
whose active life had been spent as master and 
part owner of a large merchant vessel in the Lisbon 
trade, gave an account of such an instance, which 
came under his observation. He was lying in the 
Tagus, when he was put to great anxiety and alarm 
by the following incident and its consequences : 
One of his crew was murdered by a Portuguese 
assassin, and a report arose that the ghost of the 
slain man haunted the vessel. Sailors are gener- 
ally superstitious, and those of my friend's vessel 
became unwilling to remain on board the ship ; 
and it was probable they might desert, rather than 
return to England with the ghost for a passenger. 
To prevent so great a calamity, the captain deter- 
mined to examine the story to the bottom. He 
soon found that, though all pretended to have seen 
lights and heard noises, and so forth, the weight 
of the evidence lay upon the statement, of one of 
his own mates, an Irishman and a Catholic, which 
might increase his tendency to superstition, but in 
other respects a veracious, honest, and sensible 
person, whom Captain S. had no reason to suspect 
would wilfully deceive him. He affirmed to Cap- 
tain S., with the deepest obtestations, that the spec- 
tre of the murdered man appeared to him almost 
nightly, took him from his place in the vessel, and, 
according to his own expression, worried his life 
out. He made these communications with a de- 
gree of horror which intimated the reality of his 



SOMNAMBULISM. 311 

distress and apprehensions. The captain, without 
any argument at the time, privately resolved to 
watch the motions of the ghost-seer in the night, 
whether alone or with a witness I have forgotten. 
As the ship-bell struck twelve, the sleeper started 
up with a ghastly and disturbed countenance, and, 
lighting a candle, proceeded to the galley, or cook- 
room of the vessel. He sat down with his eyes 
open, staring before him, as on some terrible ob- 
ject which he beheld with horror, yet from which 
he could not withhold his eyes. After a short 
space he arose, took up a tin can or decanter, filled 
it with water, muttering to himself all the while, 
mixed salt in the water, and sprinkled it about the 
galley. Finally, he sighed deeply, like one reliev- 
ed from a heavy burden, and, returning to his ham- 
mock, slept soundly. On the next morning, the 
haunted man told the usual precise story of his ap- 
parition, with the additional circumstances that the 
ghost had led him to the galley, but that he had 
fortunately, he knew not how, obtained possession 
of some holy water, and succeeded in getting rid 
of his unwelcome visiter. The visionary was then 
informed of the real transactions of the night, with 
so many particulars as to satisfy him he had been 
the dupe of his imagination. He acquiesced in his 
commander's reasoning, and the dream, as often 
happens in these cases, returned no more after its 
imposture had been detected." 

The case I am about to relate occurred within 
my own experience. 

A butcher's boy, about sixteen years old, appa- 
rently in perfect health, after dozing a few minutes 
in his chair, suddenly started up and began to em- 
ploy himself about his usual avocations. He had 
saddled and mounted his horse, and it was with 
the greatest difficulty that those around him could 
remove him from the saddle and carry him within 



312 SOMNAMBULISM. 

doors. While he was held in the chair by force, 
he continued violently the actions of kicking, whip- 
ping, and spurring. His observations regarding 
orders from his master's customers, the payment 
at the turnpike-gate, &c, were seemingly rational. 
The eyes, when opened, were perfectly sensible to 
light. It appears that flagellation even had no ef- 
fect in restoring the patient to a proper sense of 
his condition. The pulse in this case was 130, full 
and hard ; on the abstraction of thirty ounces of 
blood it sunk to 80, and diaphoresis ensued. After 
labouring under this phrensy for the space of an 
hour, he became sensible ; was astonished at what 
he was told had happened, and stated that he rec- 
ollected nothing subsequent to his having fetched 
some water and moved from one chair to another, 
which, indeed, he had done immediately before his 
delirium came on. 

Cast. In the monastery of , this story was 

told to a party of Alpine travellers, to beguile our 
winter's evening. 

A melancholic nobleman of Italy, Signor Augus- 
tin, walked usually at the waning of the moon. 
The walk was always preceded by his lying on 
his back with eyes fixed and open. At this time 
the beatings of his heart were scarcely perceptible. 
During this state he noticed none of his compan- 
ions around him ; but if any noise was made by 
them, his steps were hurried and agitated, and if 
the noise was increasad, a sort of maniacal state 
was induced. In his sleep he would saddle and 
mount his horse, he would listen at a keyhole if 
he heard noises in another room, and, if he entered 
his billiard-room, he would seem to be playing with 
the cue. On returning to his bed, he usually slept 
for ten hours after his walk. Tickling would al- 
ways rouse him. 
, In a Gazette of Augsburg I have read this sad 



SOMNAMBULISM. 313 

story : " Dresden was the theatre of a melancholy 
spectacle on the 20th ult. As early as seven in 
the morning a female was seen walking on the 
roof of one of the loftiest houses in the city, appa- 
rently occupied in preparing some ornaments as a 
Christmas present. The house stood, as it were, 
alone, being much higher than those adjoining it, 
and to draw her from her perilous situation was 
impossible. Thousands of spectators had assem- 
bled in the streets. It was discovered to be a 
handsome girl, nineteen years of age, the daughter 
of a master baker, possessing a small independence 
bequeathed to her by her mother. She continued 
her terrific promenade for hours, at times sitting on 
the parapet and dressing her hair. The police 
came to the spot, and various means of preserva- 
tion were resorted to. In a few minutes the street 
was thickly strewn with straw, and beds were call- 
ed for from the house, but the heartless father, in- 
fluenced by the girl's stepmother, refused them. 
Nets were suspended from the balcony of the first 
floor, and the neighbours fastened sheets to their 
windows. All this time the poor girl was walking 
in perfect unconsciousness, sometimes gazing to- 
wards the moon, and at others singing or talking to 
herself. Some persons succeeded in getting on the 
roof, but dared not approach her, for fear of the con- 
sequences if they awoke her. Towards eleven 
o'clock she approached the very verge of the para- 
pet, leaned forward, and gazed upon the multitude 
beneath. Every one felt that the moment of the 
catastrophe had arrived. She rose up, however, 
and returned calmly to the window by which she 
had got out. When she saw there were lights in 
the room, she uttered a piercing shriek, which was 
re-echoed by thousands below, and fell dead into 
the street." 

D D 



314 SOMNAMBULISM. 

Such would have been the result, according to 
poetical justice, in the beautiful romance of " La 
Sonnambula." Had Amina been awakened while 
she was descending, she would probably have top- 
pled down headlong ! 

Ev. Custom would render these wakings less 
formidable, perhaps. There was a family alluded 
to by Dr. Willis, in which the father and many 
sons jostled each other nightly in their sleep-walk. 
This was probably but a cheerful recognition and 
to sleep again. 

In Fraser's Magazine is recorded a very curious 
story of this sort. If I remember right, an individ- 
ual had the mortification of discovering, every morn- 
ing when he awoke, that the shirt in which he had 
slept was gone. Some trick was supposed to have 
been played upon him by an inmate of the house ; 
and, thinking that the practical joke would soon be 
abandoned, he went on day after day, till his stock 
of linen was completely exhausted. The individ- 
uals of the family were now anxiously examined, 
but no tidings of the stray linen could be obtained. 
It was at last suspected that some depredator had 
entered the house and unswathed his sleeping vic- 
tim, and a strict watch was made on the following 
night. At a suitable hour the somnambulist was 
seen to quit his bed, to pass through a skylight 
window to the roof of the house, to enter by an- 
other window a garret that was always locked, and 
to return shirtless to his lair. The garret was ex- 
amined, and the thousand and one shirts were found 
carefully wrapped up and deposited in a pyramid. 

Something like this is the story of the spectre of 
Tappington, in the Ingoldsby legends. 

The actions, therefore, unlike the ideas of a 
dream, are often neither heterogeneous nor incon- 
sistent, and it is astonishing to observe the exact- 
ness with which the work is executed. 



SOMNAMBULISM. 315 

Dr. Pritchard tells the case of a farmer who 
arose, saddled his horse, and rode to market in his 
sleep : the Archbishop of Bordeaux the case of a 
student who composed both theological essays and 
music thus unconsciously. 

Now if the dreamer be awakened, he will relate 
the circumstances of his dream clearly ; but the 
somnambulist, if roused, will generally express 
himself unconscious of what he intended, or of 
what he had done. It is, by-the-by, often danger- 
ous, on another account, to wake the sleep-walker ; 
indeed, we have recorded the case of a young lady 
who was walking in a garden in her sleep ; she 
was awoke, and almost instantly died. 

But in some future somnambulism the same ac- 
tions will be again performed unheeded. And if 
there be memory of the sleep- walk, the somnam- 
bulist, I believe, always relates his actions as the 
mere ideas of a dream, and is long a skeptic of the 
fact, even if there are visible signs of his exertions. 

Cast. I can illustrate this question from the 
recollection and knowledge of an ancestor of my 
own. Early on a morning, an immense number of 
footprints were observed by the men about a gate 
(on a farm in Sussex), which were not there oxer 
night. On their return the servant-girl was relating 
her dream ; that she was told the cows had got into 
a wrong field, and that she had gone out, opened 
the gate, and driven them back. And I remember 
reading that a young gentleman of Brenstein was 
seen to rise, get out of his window on the roof, and 
take a brood of young magpies from their nest, and 
wrap them in his cloak. He then returned quietly 
to his bed, and in the morning related his dream to 
his two brothers. They had slept with him, and 
had witnessed this feat, of which he would not be 
persuaded until they showed him the birds in his 
cloak. 



316 SOMNAMBULISM. 

I interrupt you, Evelyn. 

Ev. It is evident, as in dreams, and in rare cases 
of disease, that the mind of the somnambulist is 
often a contrast to its waking faculty. The mem- 
ory will leap over intervals. Dr. Dyce records an 
illustration of this. A girl, in a state of somnam- 
bulism, was taken to church, and wept at the sub- 
ject of the sermon. She never adverted to this 
impression when she awoke ; nor could she be 
brought to recollect it until, in her next sleeping 
paroxysm, she spoke of it distinctly. 

In delirium, also, we see these intervals of 
thought. The patient will commence a subject in 
the delirious state ; when this has subsided, the 
subject is dropped. In the next attack of delirium 
it will again be started, ay, and at the very point, 
even the word itself, at which it was broken off. 

We read in an American journal that a man, 
previous to an attack of mania which lasted several 
years, had placed his work-tools in the hollow of 
a tree. To them no allusion was made during the 
period of his disorder. When, however, this pass- 
ed off, he directed his son to fetch them, believing 
that he left them only yesterday. 

In the same book, too. we learn of that lady who 
became maniacal as she was engaged in needle- 
work. For seven years she thought not of this ; 
but directly she recovered, she asked for her nee- 
dle-work and canvass. The same may occur in in- 
toxication also, which is but another form of delir- 
ium. In Mr. Combe's work we are told of a drunk- 
en man who left a parcel at a wrong house. When 
sober, he recollected nothing of the circumstance ; 
but when again intoxicated, he soon remembered 
his eiTor, and reclaimed the parcel. 

Astr. These cases form high contrasts with 
Hamlet's proof of insanity : 



ANALYSIS OF SLEEP-WALKING. 317 

" Bring me to the test, 
And I the matter will reword, which madness 
Wou'd gambol from." 

Ev. Yet, if you analyze their nature, you will 
find them even proofs of derangement; for you 
thus see that the faculty of memory is changed ac- 
cordinsr to the state of mind. In the followino: 
case by Dr. Abercrombie, we shall find the same 
variation in impression and taste. A girl, in her 
early youth, expressed her abhorrence of tunes 
played on the violin, which she termed a discord- 
ant fiddle. She was after this introduced into more 
refined society, and became a somnambulist. Du- 
ring her paroxysm she imitated the beautiful airs 
which she said she had formerly heard on the same 
violin. 

Lieutenant C was once my patient, and died 

a maniac. The insanity arose from thwarted am- 
bition, and was confirmed by his notion that he had 
seen his death-fetch. For some time he walked 
and talked in his sleep ; subsequently he would 
walk for an hour round the table unconsciously. In 
him, too, was this change of feeling. He once 
talked little, and cared less for his child ; but now 
he would caress it fondly, and expressed the deep- 
est anxiety for it. It was difficult to decide, at 
times, whether this gentleman was awake or not ; 
indeed, these states of mania, which have been 
termed " melancholia errabunda" by Bellini and 
Montalti, are closely allied to somnambulism, for 
the walker is absorbed in deep thought, and totally 
unconscious of his actions. And the analogy ap- 
pears to have been recognised by the law. It is 
well known that the brother of Lord Colepepper, 
who was a great dreamer and somnambulist, shot 
a guardsman and his horse. He was found guilty; 
but he was pardoned on the ground of his complete 
unconsciousness in his somnambulism. 
Dd2 



318 ANALYSIS OF SLEEP-WALKING. 

We do not wonder more to see the perfection 
with which these unconscious labours of the som- 
nambulist are performed, than at the ease and 
power which is evinced, and the very slight fatigue 
which ensues, although the occupation might have 
been most laborious. 

As in chorea the most delicate girls will dance 
incessantly for twenty-four hours, resting merely 
for one sole hour, yet they will sit down perfectly 
cool and free from fatigue. 

Ida. Is it not wonderful that the somnambulist 

will incur great dangers with complete sang-froid ? 

They will walk over 

" Torrents roaring loud, 
On the unsteadfast footing of a spear ;" 

or scale the gigantic precipice, the mere contem- 
plation of which would fright their mind from its 
propriety when awake. I remember to have read 
of a French Jew, who walked by chance across a 
dangerous pass over a brook, in the dark, without 
the slightest fear or harm. The next day, per- 
ceiving what danger he had incurred, he fell down 
dead. 

Ev. It is equally curious that a concentration of 
nervous energy, which is here the result of uncon- 
sciousness, should also be produced by fear in some 
cases, which in others paralyzes ; but this is in- 
deed a slight degree of heroism, or energy of de- 
spair. Thus we leap far higher, and run much 
faster, when danger threatens, than we could be- 
lieve. 

These are all very apt illustrations of somnam- 
bulism. I will check myself in quotations of more, 
as the phenomena may closely resemble each other. 

But what is its philosophy, and how can I ven- 
ture on its explanation, which involves the most 
intricate pathology of the nervous system % unless, 



ANALYSIS OF SLEEP-WALKING. 319 

with the self-complacency of the quaint old Burton, 
I cut the Gordian knot by this affirmation, " There 
is nothing offends but a concourse of bad humours, 
which trouble the fantasy. These vapours move 
the fantasy, the fantasy the appetite, which, moving 
the animal spirits, causeth the body to walk up and 
down, as if it were awake." 

Thus much I may expound to you, if I am again 
allowed to run up our scientific scale. The phi- 
losophy of the dream and of incubus refers to the 
activity of the brain with a passive body ; for som- 
nambulism, we require an active body with an un- 
conscious brain. 

Now there are Jour sources of nervous influence : 
the brain and cerebellmn, within the scull ; the 
marrow in the spinal canal ; and the nervous bun- 
dles in the large cavities termed ganglia. 

It is on the independent or unconscious function 
of the marrow, chiefly, that those mysterious ac- 
tions, which do not seem to be willed by a con- 
scious mind, depend. 

In the day-dream, a thought or form shall pre- 
sent itself, even at a time when the mind is em- 
ployed on subjects of a contrasted nature. These 
thoughts, or forms, are usually fraught with a high 
degree of pleasure or of pain, or refer to events of 
vital importance to the dreamer ; such are the ob- 
jects of the lover's idolatry, the anticipation of mis- 
fortune, or subjects of prospective felicity. Un- 
der this excitement, the influence of external ob- 
jects is often for a time lost; the retina may be 
struck by a ray, or the memhrani tympani by a vi- 
bration, but the mind shall fail in its perception, 
no internal impression being made. This cannot 
arise from a point of the retina, or the expansion 
of the auditory nerve being preoccupied, as some 
have supposed. The idea of material impression 



320 ANALYSIS OF SLEEP-WALKING. 

must fail in explanation; for, on the instant that 
the mind is awakened, the external impression is 
again perceived. The external sense, in this case, 
is not in fault, nor is its direct influence on the 
sensorium suspended; for we find that a person 
will continue to read in this state, as it were, me- 
chanically ; but the attention is diverted by deep 
thought, so that the reader, at the end of his task, 
may have no remembrance of what he has been 
reading. 

Let me tell of a curious little episode of Dr. 
Darwin's, which will aid me in my illustration. A 
young lady was playing on the piano a very elab- 
orate piece of music. It was correctly and scien- 
tifically performed, although she was agitated du- 
ring her task ; and when it was over, the lady 
burst into tears. She had been watching all the 
time a favourite canary in the fluttering of death, 
and with this catastrophe her mind, was almost 
wholly occupied, but her fingers did not err in their 
complicated and delicate motions, which they un- 
doubtedly would have done if the will or mind 
alone had directed them. 

In sanity of mind, and in mania, the most phil- 
osophical distinction is based on the health or dis- 
ease of memory. The ecstasy of madness may 
not seem, perhaps, more irrational than an ecstatic 
vision ; but the maniac will not reword the matter, 
whereas the mere visionary will repeat the action 
of the trance as a dream. 

Astr. But there is a sort of somnambulism the 
reverse of this. In the retreat to Corunna, many 
of the soldiers, although exhausted by a long 
march, and having actually fallen asleep, continu- 
ed to move forward, leaving their companions be- 
hind, who halted and laid down to repose. 

Ev. This is the continued association of that ex < 



ANALYSIS OF SLEEP-WALKING. 321 

citement which has produced muscular motion. 
The mind was exhausted and sleepy, the brain 
was inert ; but we believe that the spinal marrow 
does, of itself • effect motion, while the will and 
consciousness sleep ; and we may also stand and 
sleep. These soldiers did not walk in their sleep, 
but slept in their walk. 

Astr. I am informed, too, that Richard Turpin, 
in allusion to his famous flight to York, asserted 
that Black Bess appeared to gallop unconsciously. 

Ev\ It is true ; and when we reflect on this gi- 
gantic feat, we may suppose that the mare gallop- 
ed the farther, because her consciousness of fa- 
tigue was not awake, and her muscular energy was 
thus concentrated. 

Paralyzed muscles will often quiver when the 
sound limb is quiet ; the brain's influence being, 
in this case too, inert, sensation is diminished ; but 
involuntary motion continues from a habit in the 
muscle, or the excitement of unexhausted irrita- 
bility, as in chorea, spasm, &c. And in some cases 
of post-mortem galvanism, Dr. Dunbar, of Virginia, 
passed the galvanic aura along the ulnar nerve of 
an executed negro, and the fingers instantly quiver- 
ed, and assumed the attitude and action of one 
playing on a flute or the strings of a violin. 

Astr. It is possible, then, to move without our 
willing to do so, or being conscious of our act. 

Ev. There are believed to be, indeed it is al- 
most a demonstration, four sets of nerves, traced 
along the spinal marrow : two to the brain, of 
sensation and volition, by which the mind feels what 
the body touches, and transmits its will to the mus- 
cles ; two others to the marrow, by which it also 
is stimulated by outward touch, and by which it 
excites the muscles to motion. 

Now when the brain's influence is kept from a 
21 



322 ANALYSIS OF SLEEP-WALKING. 

muscle, that muscle will still possess irritability, de- 
rived from the spinal marrow ; nay, that irritability 
will be greater, because it lias not been expended by 
the acts of that volition which resides solely in the 
brain, and which is now cut off. Thus the excito- 
motory function, and the influence of volition, are, 
in these cases, antagonists. And this principle of 
the incident and reflex spinal nerve is an explana- 
tion of the curious dilemma, regarding the suspen- 
sion of the will in sleep and dream, to which Dr. 
Stewart alludes : " Not a suspension of volition, 
but only of its influence over those organs which 
it moves when we are awake." Decide for your- 
selves between the physical and metaphysical the- 
ories. 

Yet, do you not see that all this does not essen- 
tially require the direction of mind ] If you tickle 
the palm of a sleeping child, it will close its hand 
upon your finger ; if' you awake it, and engage its 
attention, it will often leave its hold. This is a fact 
proved by the anencephalous or brainless children. 
Even the puppy, deprived of its brain, and also the 
mammary foetuses of the kangaroo and opossum, fix 
eagerly on the nipple when it touches their lips. 
There is a beautiful mechanism in the foot of the 
roosting birds adapted to this physiological law. 
The tendon of the claws is tightened immediately 
they are touched, by which action they contrive to 
grasp the bough or perch even when asleep. In 
cases of paralysis even, the foot will sometimes be 
instantly drawn up, although it does not possess 
the least sensation ; we may assert, then, that irri- 
tability is in an inverse ratio to sensibility. 

The polype, in which we trace no brain or nerve, 
exists and moves by its irritability, and without 
sensation or consciousness. We know, also, that 
the vis insito, or vis nervoso of a muscle, that is, its 



ANALYSIS OF SLEEP-WALKING. 3-23 

irritability, exists even after the animal life has 
ceased. The turtle will live and move long after 
its brain has been removed. The heart itself, an 
involuntary muscle, is stimulated also to action with- 
out sensation. The heart of the assassin Belling- 
ham beat long after he was cut from the gallows. 

If I have made these things clear, I am now pre- 
pared to explain, with some anticipation, those two 
curious contrasts, somnambulism and incubus. If 
the spinal or motive nerves be asleep, and the cer- 
ebral, or intellectual, or volition nerves awake, we 
shall have nightmare ; if, on the contrary, the mo- 
tive nerves are in excess, beyond the sensiferous 
or volition nerves, we have sleep-walking. 

Astr. I believe the philosophy of Leibnitz af- 
firms two perceptions ; one with, and another with- 
out consciousness. I do not recollect if he dis- 
tinguishes the seat of these 2 ierce P iwns > but if the 
brain be that which perceives, I presume con- 
sciousness will follow that perception sometimes in 
so slight a degree as not to excite judgment or re- 
flection. Am I correct \ 

Ev. You have adopted the common error of 
metaphysicians. If, in the abstraction of waking 
moments, some persons talk to themselves, as it 
were, unconsciously, so, from the reflex influence, 
may volition and motion occur, with as little self- 
feeling. That the immediate impression, however, 
and a necessity of action may combine, is illustra- 
ted by Dr. Beattie's case of the officer who could 
be thus excited in his sleep. By a whisper in his 
ear, he was induced to go through the whole cer- 
emony of a duel, and did not completely wake un- 
til the report of his pistol roused him. This gen- 
tleman was also told that he had fallen overboard, 
aud he began to imitate the motions of swimming ; 
then that a shark was following him, when he would 



324 ANALYSIS OF SLEEP-WALKING. 

dive off his couch upon the floor ; and when he 
was told that the battle was raging around him, he 
proved himself an arrant coward by running aWay. 

Somnambulism may be induced by congestion 
or irritation of that point where the incident nerve 
blends with the gray matter of the spinal marrow, 
producing internal irritation, as the tickling of the 
foot does through the cutaneous nerves of a sense- 
less limb. 

Cast. We are thankless creatures, dear Evelyn, 
but all this reiteration bewilders me ; does it not 
you, Ida % Yet, in my simplicity, I can but think 
it unphilosophical entirely to disregard the will as 
the spring of our actions. 

Ev. If I must explain, fair lady, I cannot avoid 
prolixity. But to your question I will answer no ; 
for somnambulism may be excited by the memory 
of an intention. In the experiment made by the 
committee of the physical society of Lausanne, on 
the Sieur Devaud, of Vevay, it was proved that, 
on the evening before the fit of somnambulism, his 
head was heavy, and he had a sense of oppression 
on his eyelids. If, at this time, the mind was im- 
pressed by some legend, or story, or incident, the 
actions of the sleep-walk were perfectly coincident 
with such a subject. If a romantic tale of banditti 
were related, his alarm would be apparent in his 
subsequent sleep. In this somnambulist was beau- 
tifully illustrated the effect of permanent impres- 
sion on the brain, rendering, for a time, the sense 
of vision useless ; for, having once perused his pa- 
per, it was so imprinted on his mind, that the exact 
spot for each letter was exactly fixed on by the fin- 
ger ; and we have heard of one more interesting 
case, in which the somnambule, remembering that 
he had made errors in his writing, traced, on a 
blank paper substituted for that written on. the cor- 



ANALYSIS OF SLEEP-WALKING. 325 

rections, in the very places corresponding to the er- 
roneous writing. And that here was memory was 
proved in this, that during the time his eyes were 
shut the pen was dropped on the very sjwt where 
the inkstanA stood ; but this being removed, no ink 
was obtained, and the writing was blank. 

Now we believe that there are certain vessels 
which contribute to nervous energy, perhaps by se- 
creting a nervous fluid in the brain, or by concen- 
trating electricity, which Dr. Faraday believes may 
constitute the animal portion of the nervous sys- 
tem. This influence may be profusely accumula- 
ted in a waking state ; the resolution to act has 
been formed, or there may be a rapid production 
in sleep of this energy. Then, when sleep occurs, 
this impression becomes uncontrolled. The third 
form of insanity of Spurzheim, irresistibility, exists, 
and the night-walk takes place ; and, indeed, it may 
form an interesting analogy to that satiety of the 
voluptuary, " Childe Harold," 

" Who e'en for change of scene would seek the shades below," 
and to one unhallowed story related in " Salmonia." 

From this excess there is the stimulus of pain to 
move, one of the most powerful motives of human 
action. Cardan, if we may believe in his "Opera 
et Vita," was at least a monomaniac ; and he " was 
wont instinctively, as it were, to relieve this ten- 
dency of his mind by the excitement of bodily pain." 
I may assure you that I have, during my profes- 
sional studies, often witnessed (and, indeed, have 
sometimes suggested) a remedy on this knowledge ; 
you may be aware that a severe and painful dis- 
order will mitigate, if not entirely dissipate, that 
apathetic misery which springs from a vacant or 
unoccupied mind. 

In contrasting childhood and age, we witness 
.... . . 

these curiosities in the restless activity of youth 

E E 



326 ANALYSIS OF SLEEP-WALKING. 

and early manhood, for at these periods we are 
very constant somnambulists : not so in the passive 
state of old age, in which sleep-walking is very 
rare. Something of this we see also in the grow- 
ing pains and fidgets of girls and those whose du- 
ties are sedentary. Exercise is the relief for all 
this. 

Now when the sleep-walk has exhausted this 
excess of irritability or electricity (if it be so), the 
dreamer returns to bed and sleep. A hint is here 
thrown out to us, that if powerful exertion be em- 
ployed previous to sleep, the night- walk might not 
ensue. . Lethargy often terminates in somnambu- 
lism. 

If I may for another moment still prose over the 
intricate, but deeply interesting question of the pa- 
thology of somnambulism, I will observe, that we 
often find it one symptom of madness or idiocy, 
and we know that somnambulism not seldom ter- 
minates in epilepsy. 

In the brains of epileptic idiots, who are very 
determined somnambulists, we discover changes 
the most various : effusion, congestion, ossification of 
\ membranes, ramollissement, indurcisscment, bony 
spiculce, or points pressing the brain, tubercles, cysts. 
\ In some, the scull assumes the density of ivory. 
J Yet in those persons who have been known to be 
\ sleep-walkers, the inspection is seldom satisfactory. 
Plethora of the head has often, however, preceded 
the sleep- walk. Signor Pozzi, physician to Ben- 
edict XIV., if he submitted not to depletion each 
second month, became a somnambulist ; and we 
have known that in chorea, previous to the dance, 
and in some cases of somnambulism also, pain has 
been felt from the occiput along the course of the 
spinal marrow. This is from immediate excite- 
ment ; but dyspepsia and other abdominal derange' 



IMITATIVE MONOMANIA. 327 

merits may so influence the ganglia and nerves of 
organic life, and, through them, the brain and cord, 
as to excite sleep-walking by remote sympathy. 

That injuries of the nervous matter about the 
nape of the neck are of the highest importance in 
our studies of these eccentric actions, is certain. 
The experiments of Flourens show that the 'pro- 
gressive or forward motion of animals is influenced 
by varied states of the cerebellum. When Magen- 
die cut through the corpora striata, the animal dart- 
ed forward ; when the pons Varolii was cut, the 
animal rolled over sixty times in a minute. 

When a soldier is struck by a ball about the cer- 
vical vertebra, he often springs from the ground 
and drops dead. 

It is our duty, then, not to slight the condition 
of the somnambulist. It' simple irritation be its ex- 
citing cause, much benefit may be derived from 
counter-action on the surface, and other remedial 
means. Even if there be diseased structure, some 
palliation may be afforded. As preventives of the 
fit, we may inculcate an abstinence from late meals, 
exercise in the evening previous to retirement to 
rest, a high pillow, &c. 

If the propensity continue in spite of our efforts, 
it will be risrht to have the windows fastened or 
locked, and the door of the chamber bolted with- 
out ; or to confine the ankle or wrist to the bed- 
post by a long fillet, which may, by its detention, 
awake the sleeper on starting from the bed. 



IMITATIVE MONOMANIA. 

" Men, wives, and children stare, cry out, and run, 
As it were doomsday." — Julius Caesar. 

There are other very curious analogies of som- 
nambulism which are marked by a power of action 



328 IMITATIVE MONOMANIA. 

that appears preternatural. And here again we 
witness the irresistibility of motion, which seems 
to subvert the laws of gravitation and the princi- 
ples of mechanics. The involuntary twitchings 
and contortions of St. Vitus's dance present the 
slighter form of these eccentric actions, which, in 
the intense degree, become like the fury of a ra- 
ving maniac. 

In young girls there often is a proneness to be 
excited by slight causes — to be startled by mere 
trifles. 

Savary tells us of a man who, at two o'clock 
each day, was irresistibly impelled to rap at doors 
and make very odd noises, and felt intense pleas- 
ure in doing this. If this had occurred in the 
night, it would have been termed somnambulism. 

Gall also relates of a young man at Berlin, who, 
after rolling about in his bed for some time, and 
jumping out and in repeatedly in his sleep, at last 
started up awake, astonished at the crowd around 
his bed. And Dr. Darwin writes of. a boy nine 
years old, who went through a course of gymnas- 
tics, with an occasional song between the acts. At 
length he seemed bursting, and soon sank down in 
a stupor. 

Astr. I have read (I think in Mezeray) of an 
epidemic mania of this sort, in which the creatures 
tore off their clothes, and ran naked through the 
streets and churches, until they fell breathless on 
the ground. Some of them swelled even to burst- 
ing, unless they were bound down by cords. The 
disease was referred to the agency of demons, and 
treated by exorcisms ■ they even tore their flesh to 
free themselves from their possessing devils. I 
have seen also a confident story of some nuns, 
who jumped so high during an hysteric ecstasy, 
that they were at length seen to fly ; in imitation, 



IMITATIVE MONOMANIA. 329 

perhaps, of the Corybantes, the priests of Cybele, 
who, in the celebration of their mysteries, leaped 
and raved, like madmen in the midst of their 
shrieks and howlings. 

Ev. All these eccentricities amount to complete 
monomania for the time they last, and they are 
marked often by a very violent imitative propen- 
sity, like the delirium which came upon the Ab- 
derites on witnessing the performance of the " An- 
dromeda" of Euripides by Archelaiis. Of such 
nature was the " dancing mania" of the Middle 
Ages ; the tarantula of Apulia, in which melan- 
choly was succeeded by madness ; the feats of the 
Jumpers of Cornwall, and the Convulsionnaires of 
the Parisian miracles. 

Yet, with all this apparent violence, there might 
be a power of control by management. On some 
sudden and extreme mental influence, there was 
in the Maison de la Charite at Haerlem an infec- 
tious convulsion of this nature, so that the troop of 
little scholars, girls and boys, were a mere legion 
of dancing maniacs, and nothing appeared to re- 
lieve them until a ruse of the physician Boerhaave 
put to flight the illusion. With a solemn voice he 
pronounced, in the hearing of the little creatures, 
his decision that each of them should be burned 
to the bone of the arm with a red-hot iron. From 
that moment the mania subsided. 

Dr. Hecker, in his account of the Dance of the 
Middle Ages, notices two forms of this national 
monomania — " Tarantulism" and the " Danse de 
Saint Guy.'''' 

The first was marked by all sorts of illusions, 
demonomania, obscene dancing, groaning, and fall- 
ing down senseless. 

The persons who believed themselves bitten by 
the tarantula became sad and stupid. The flute or 
E e 2 



330 IMITATIVE MONOMANIA. 

guitar alone could give them succour. At the 
sound of its music they awoke, as if by enchant- 
ment ; their eyes opened ; their movements, which 
at first slowly followed the music, gradually be- 
came animated, until they merged into an impas- 
sioned dance. To interrupt the music was disas- 
trous : the patients relapsed into their stupidity, 
until they became exhausted by fatigue. During 
the attacks, several singular idiosyncracies were 
manifested, contrary to what occurred in Germany. 
Scarlet was a favourite colour, though some pre- 
ferred green or yellow. A no less remarkable 
phenomenon was their ardent longing for the sea ; 
they implored to be earned to its shores, or to be 
surrounded by marine pictures ; some even threw 
themselves into the waves. But the dominant pas- 
sion was for music, though they varied in their par- 
ticular tastes. Some sought the braying sound of 
the trumpet, others the softer harmony of stringed 
instruments. 

There was once a woman of Piedmont who was 
charmed by the " capriccio," played by the leader 
of an orchestra, into an ecstatic dance. In her, 
the sensations, as she expressed them, were so 
" strangely mingled" as powerfully to illustrate the 
fine line of distinction between pleasure and pain. 
She gradually became weaker, and the memory of 
the music was so intense, that, while she was irre- 
sistibly impelled to this maniacal dance, her ex- 
pressions were those of acute pain, and her cries 
were constantly of those "horrid sounds." In six 
months this unhappy creature died exhausted. 

The Tigretier of Abyssinia is believed in Africa 
to be the effect of demoniac influence. Indeed, 
there is in this strange state a complete metamor- 
phosis of features, and voice, and manner. In the 
hearts, even, of the women, the affections of nature 



IMITATIVE MONOMANIA. 331 

and of attachment seem to be annihilated, and they 
seem overwhelmed by some oppressive weight, 
which is dissipated only by almost preternatural 
exertion, excited by the charm of music, in which 
wild dance the female is dressed in ornaments of 
silver, like the chiefs of battle. This maniac move- 
ment is often, I believe, kept up from early morn- 
ing until sunset, ere the accumulation of energy is 
exhausted ; and even then the woman will start off 
suddenly and outrun the fleetest hunter, until she 
drops as if dead. But it seems the climax of the 
cure is not complete until she drops all her orna- 
ments, and a matchlock is fired over her, when she 
owns her name and family, both having been pre- 
viously denied. She is taken to the church and 
sprinkled with holy water, and then the spell is 
broken. 

There is another strange monomania, an incite- 
ment to suicide, evinced in that loathsome disease 
of the Lombard and Venetian plains, Pellagra. 
The prevailing fashion is drowning ; so that Strambi 
has termed this monomania water-madness. 

Others are driven on by still more horrible fan- 
cies. Thus Grenier wrapped himself in a wolf- 
skin, and murdered young maids that he might de- 
vour them ; and among ourselves, the desire to 
change the infant into a cherub has led the wild fa- 
natic to the murder of the innocents ! 

Astr. This, I suppose, is Lycanthropy, or wolf- 
madness, on which old Burton so funnily expatiates, 
and to which the author of the old play of" Lingua" 
also points, alluding to the 

" Thousand vain imaginations, 
Making some think their heads as big as horses, 
Some that they're dead, some that they're turned to wolves.' 

In the woods of Limousin, in France, the belief 
in the power of changing from men to wolves is still 



332 IMITATIVE MONOMANIA. 

prevalent. The Loup-garoux, or Wehr-wolf, was 
thought to have been in league with Satan. 

In my wanderings through Poictou, these mon- 
sters seemed to me to confine their unholy powers 
to midnight prowling and the wolf-howl. Yet 
Marie, in the il Lai du Bisclavarct," endows them 
with the cannibalism of the goul and the vampire : 

" So Garwal roams in savage pride, 

And hunts for blood, and feeds on men ; 
Spreads dire destruction far and wide, 
And makes the forest broad his den." 

Ev. The extraordinary effects of the instinct of 
imitation in spreading these epidemics is but an 
example on the grand scale of what we see daily 
instances of in yawning, hiccoughing, coughing, 
and other similar acts, and in the propagation of 
hysteria and epilepsy. Some persons, again, pos- 
sess an irresistible tendency to imitate others in 
mere trifling things. Tissot relates a case of a fe- 
male who never could avoid doing everything she 
saw any one else do. She was obliged to walk blind- 
folded in the streets ; and, if you tied her hands, 
she experienced intolerable anguish until they were 
loosened. There was another girl, that was seen 
by Dr. Horn, at Salzburg, who sat cross-legged, like 
a hog. She had been brought up in a sty. 

Even during the Commonwealth, the religious 
fanaticism of the Quakers carried the proselytes to 
such a pitch that the preachers were thrown into 
excessive convulsions, and seemed possessed of 
demons. The churches were broken into, and the 
ministers insulted and attacked in the pulpits. 
Chains, and locks, and the pillory, which were in- 
flicted on these mad people, failed, as it might be 
expected, in restoring their senses, although they 
bore them with the most astonishing fortitude. In 
their worshipping, the same eccentricities were 



IMITATIVE MONOMANIA. 333 

seen : after a deep and long silence, a number of 
the devotees rose at once, and declaimed. The 
presumptuous imitation of the Saviour was a fa- 
vourite illusion ; and the forty-days' fast sometimes 
terminated in death. Naylor, convinced of his di- 
vine identity, rode in procession on a mule, while 
his deluded proselytes spread their garments, and 
sung hosannas to him. Nay, the purity of the fe- 
male mind was so grossly perverted, that a Quaker- 
ess walked naked into a church, before Cromwell, 
as a sign to the people ! 

There was a letter in an " Aberdeen Herald," 
dated Invergordon, Sept. 9, 1840, from which I 
quote this story : 

" I had the curiosity to go to the church of Ros- 
keen last night, to observe the workings of a revival. 
I was prepared for something extraordinary, but 
certainly not for what I saw. The sobs, groans, 
loud weeping, fainting, shrieking, mingled in the 
most wild and unearthly discordance with the harsh, 
cracked voice of the clergyman, who could only at 
intervals be heard above the general weeping and 
wailing. I was struck by the cries being all from 
young voices ; and on examining a little more 
closely, I found that the performers were almost 
wholly children — girls varying from five to fourteen 
years of age ; a few young women, perhaps a dozen, 
but not a single man or lad. I stood for nearly half 
an hour by three girls, the eldest about twelve years 
of age, who were in the most utter distress, each 
vying with the other in despairing cries. Their 
mother came to them, but made no exertion to check 
their bursts of — I don't know what to call it. In 
the churchyard there were lots of children in various 
stages of fainting. One poor girl seemed quite 
dead, and I insisted on one of the old crones, who 
was piously looking on, to go for some water, or 



334 IMITATIVE MONOMANIA. 

to attempt something to give her relief, but was 
told, ' It was no' a case for water ; it was the Lord, 
and he would do as he liked with her. She was 
seeing something we didna see, and hearing some- 
thing we didna hear.' She was lying on the ground, 
supported by her father. Indeed, the poor igno- 
rant parents have been worked upon until they be- 
lieve they are highly honoured by the Lord, by 
having such signs of the Spirit manifested in their 
families. The service, if it may be called so, was 
in Gaelic." 

In the reign of the second George, Count Zin- 
zendorf came from Germany and established the 
principles of the Hernhutters, or Moravians. These 
were debased by ceremonies, which they misnamed 
worship, of the most licentious character. 

Like Mohammed, Zinzendorf proclaimed himself 
a prophet and a king, and in his presumption of an 
immediate appeal to, and answer from the Sav- 
iour in all matters of doubt, made a host of prose- 
lytes. 

Ida. In our own day, another delirious profana- 
tion of the holy name of the Saviour has been ex- 
hibited in the imitative monomania of Sir William 
Courtenay (as he was called), in Kent. In May, 
1838, this wild enthusiast (whose beauty, of feature 
and expression closely resembled the paintings of 
Christ by Guido and Carlo Dolce, and who, to 
heighten this resemblance, wore his hair and beard 
in a peculiar form, and clothed himself in a robe) 
gained by his art numerous disciples in Kent, who 
implicitly believed his divine nature and mission. 
His career was, however, soon closed in a very 
awful and bloody tragedy — the death of himself, 
of many of his followers, and of the military who 
were called out to secure him. His disciples, to 
the last, not only believed in his divine nature, but, 



IMITATIVE MONOMANIA. 335 

even after his interment, were watching in implicit 
belief of his approaching resurrection ! 

The mania of the " unknown tongues" has al- 
most equalled this delusion. If we presume to 
analyze, on the principles of philosophy or reason, 
those religious eccentricities which seem, even in 
the mind of the fanatic, to spring from sincerity or 
conviction, they must yet, I suppose, be termed 
maniacal, and this without the slightest profanation 
of the Divine will. Evil, doubtless, is permitted 
for a wise purpose, and while we deplore its im- 
mediate effects, we must not hope to reveal its ori- 
gin or its end. 

At Brighton, some time ago, while at one of the 
Millennium chapels, the wife of Caird, who was 
then preaching, uttered a dismal howling of this 
unknown language, which paralyzed some, and 
threw into convulsions many others of the congre- 
gation. A young French lady among them in- 
stantly was struck with maniacal despondency, and, 
after some infliction of self-torture, became deliri- 
ous, and died in a hospital. 

We learn from Plutarch that in Milesium there 
was once a prevalent fashion among the young 
girls to hang themselves ; while the same mania 
once spread among the demoiselles of Lyons, to 
drown themselves in the Rhone. The Convulsion- 
ists of Paris, in 1724, not only inflicted self-torture, 
but in their wild delight solicited the by-standers 
to stone them. 

The commission of a great or extraordinary 
crime to this day produces, not unfrequently, a 
kind of mania of imitation in the district in which 
it happened. I have known incidents, falsely call- 
ed religious, to occasion similar events ; and what 
is remarkable, the scene or place of the frst event 
seemed to favour its repetition, by other persons 



336 IMITATIVE MONOMANIA. 

approaching it. Thus a supposed miracle having 
been performed before the gate of the convent of 
St. Grenevieve, such a number of similar occurrences 
happened on the same spot in a few days, that the 
police was compelled to post a peremptory notice 
on the gate, prohibiting any individual from work- 
ing miracles on the place in question. When the 
locality was thus shut up, the thaumaturgia ceased. 
It is not long since we witnessed in Paris two 
events of a similar character. About four years 
ago, at the Hdtel des Invalides, a veteran hung 
himself on the threshold of one of the doors of a 
corridor. No suicide had occurred in the estab- 
lishment for two years previously, but in the suc- 
ceeding fortnight five invalids hung themselves on 
the same crossbar, and the governor was obliged 
to shut up the passage. During the last days of 
the empire, again, an individual ascended the col- 
umn in the Place Vendome, and threw himself 
down and was dashed to pieces. The event ex- 
cited a great sensation ; and, in the course of the 
ensuing week, four persons imitated the example, 
and the police were obliged to proscribe the -en- 
trance to the column. The same mania was al- 
most induced by the suicide of a foolish girl, who 
leaped from the balcony of our own city column 
on Fish-street Hill. Indeed, Monseigneur Mare, 
of Paris, alludes to a society enrolled for the mere 
purpose of suicide, and there was an annual ballot 
to decide which of these miserable creatures should 
be immolated as the suicide of the year ! ! 

Dr. Burrows, I remember also, relates cases 
analogous to these. They occurred in the ranks 
of some army on the Continent, in which there 
was an epidemic propensity to suicide, until the 
general began to hang the soldiers on trees as 
scarecrows. The mania, as you may believe, very 
soon subsided. 



IMITATIVE MONOMANIA. 337 

Ev. Your curiosities eclipse mine, Ida. But 
the natural leaning to the marvellous will, without 
mania or fanaticism, by the mere sympathy of in- 
tercommunicating minds, spread wide these illu- 
sions, even in the most simple instances. Some 
time since, a veiy large assemblage were watching 
with intense interest the stone lion of the Percies 
at Northumberland House. They were unanimous 
in the conviction that he was swinging his tail to 
and fro ; a false impression, of course, which had 
gradually accumulated from this solitary exclama- 
tion of a passenger : " By Heaven, he wags his 
tail ! ' ' Of this sort of illusion I was myself a wit- 
ness. Beneath the western portico of St. Paul's 
a crowd of gazers were bending their eyes on the 
image of the saint, who was nodding at them with 
a very gracious affability. Curiosity had risen to 
the pitch of wonder at a miracle, when suddenly 
a sparrow-hawk flew from the ringlets of the saint, 
and the illusion vanished. 

These eccentricities, you will perceive, occurred 
spontaneously ; and it is a most interesting study 
to note the analogies between these diseased ac- 
tions, and those resulting from the influence of cer- 
tain gases and vegetable juices. 

I have known the seeds of stramonium, when 
swallowed by children, produce a temporary de- 
lirium, and a state of chorea, singing, dancing, 
laughing, and other mad frolics, which could not 
be controlled. And in the " History of Virginia," 
by Beverly, it is recorded, that during the rebellion 
of Bacon, at James' Town some soldiers, after eat- 
ing the young leaves of stramonium for spinach, 
enacted " a very pleasant comedy, for they turned 
natural fools upon it for several days : one would 
blow up a feather into the air ; another would dart 
straws at it with much fury ; another, stark naked, 
22 F f 



338 IMITATIVE MONOMANIA. 

was seen sitting up in a corner, like a monkey, 
grinning and making mouths." In this frantic con- 
dition they were confined for safety. In eleven 
days they recovered, but had no memory of the 
delirium. Such, also, is the effect of large quanti- 
ties of black henbane. Dr. Patouillet, of Toucy, 
in France, in 1737, witnessed a mania of this sort 
in nine persons, who had eaten of that root. It 
was marked by the strangest actions and expres- 
sions. In these, also, there was no recollection of 
the illusion. 

But the closest analogy, in point of concentrated 
energy, to eccentric somnambulism, is the effect of 
the inhalation of the ''gaseous oxide of azote," or 
"protoxide of nitrogen," the laughing-gas. So 
intense is its impression on the nerves and blood 
of the brain, that it effects a perfect metempsycho- 
sis. This gas contains a greater relative proportion 
of oxygen than common air, and it is inhaled 
through a tube from a bladder or silk bag. After 
a little giddiness and headache, the breather soon 
begins to feel a very delicious thrilling ; the eyes 
are dazzled by even common objects, so much are 
the senses excited. Pride mid. pugnacity are quick- 
ly developed : we think ourselves grand seigniors, 
and elevated far beyond the common class of mor- 
tals. We expect from all a salaam, arid, with all 
the proud dignity of papacy, wonder that the peo- 
ple do not fall down and kiss our toe. We turn a 
deaf ear to all which is addressed to us ; in short, 
we are dissociated from all around us. Sir Hum- 
phrey Davy, as the effect was wearing off, seemed 
to have been charmed into the combined philoso- 
phy of Berkley and Hume. He writes, " With the 
most intense belief and prophetic manner, I ex- 
claimed, ' Nothing exists but thoughts ; the uni- 
verse is composed of impressions, ideas, pleasures, 
and pains.' " 






IMITATIVE MONOMANIA. 339 

This brilliancy is probably the effect of scarlet 
or highly oxygenized blood, acting on the brain 
and nerves of the senses. 

The duration of this gaseous influence is usually 
from five minutes to a quarter of an hour. It is 
not, however, always so transient. 

From the record of Professor Silliman, it seems 
to have converted an "II Penseroso" into a "L'Al- 
legro." A man of melancholy became a man of 
mirth ; and, although before his inhalation he had 
no sweet tooth in his head, he began to eat little 
except sugar and sweet cakes, and to swallow mo- 
lasses with his meat and potatoes. 

Although sparring is the grand amusement of 
the gas-breather, yet we can often decide on the 
shades of character, however studiously they may 
have been concealed from us in sane moments. 

A gentleman among my fellow-students threw 
himself forcibly on his back by his attempts to 
spout Shakspeare with dignity and effect. 

Another threw himself prostrate in the snow, 
and, rolling himself over and back across the quad- 
rangle at Guy's, turned himself into an immense 
cylindrical snowball. 

Another snapped his fingers in defiance, and 
walked with a most pompous stint, and without 
his hat, to the middle of London Bridge ere he 
was brought to his senses. 

Indeed, these experiments seem so replete with 
the ludicrous, that I wonder Cruikshank and Hood 
have not often caught a fact, as a theme for their 
brilliant fancy. 



340 REVERY. 

REVERY. 

" That fools should be so deep-contemplative." 
" In his brain 
He hath strange places cramm'd 
With observation, the which he vents 
In mangled forms." — As You Like It. 

Astr. I was dreaming last night, Evelyn, of 
your eccentric puppets ; and I cannot but wonder 
at the contrasted influences of nitrous oxide on the 
brain and marrow, as you say. In one, we see the 
wondrous phenomena of somnambulism ; in the 
other, a state of apathy, like the almost senseless 
revery of the idiot. 

Ev. You are shrewd, Astrophel, and have hit on 
these objective analogies with the acuteness of a 
pathologist. Contrasts they truly are, and yet 
there is a natural transition from one to the other. 

Somnambulism is the most eccentric condition 
of sleep, and ULevery is that state which constitutes 
the nearest approximation to slumber. But the 
French verb rever is a comprehensive word, sig- 
nifying all the eccentricities of mind, from idiocy 
to divine philosophy ; so that its derivative, " Rev- 
ery," may be construed into Dream, Delirium, Ra- 
ving, Thought, Fancy, Meditation, Abstraction. 

You may wonder at this combination ; but, how- 
ever you may smile, the existence of every one is 
marked by a certain degree of moral or instinctive 
mania, modified by the peculiarity of habit, taste, 
or sentiment, and, I may add, of intellectual mo- 
nomania (" monomanie raisonnante"), in reference 
to some particular subject. There may, indeed, be 
an incubation of madness, and, if circumstances 
occur to sit and hatch, the germs will be devel- 
oped. When these two, moral and intellectual er- 
ror (which may separately pass current in the world 
for eccentricity), unite, then the man is mad, and 
becomes an irresponsible agent. 






ABSTRACTION OF IDIOCY. 341 

The term "Revery," then, will imply the varied 
conditions of that faculty which phrenology terms 
concentratircness, the extremes of which mark the 
idiot and the sage. 

Idiocy is the most abject and imperfect condition 
of the waking mind, resembling closely the first dis- 
position to slumber, the sensation of doziness. The 
creature will commit the most absurd acts, and ut- 
ter the most ridiculous or profane expressions, 
without the redeeming apology of being engaged 
in abstract thought or abstruse calculation. 

It is consolatory, however, to know that this 
weakness is usually connate, or manifested at the 
very dawn of intellect ; so that we have not the 
painful study of contrasting in one being the light 
of mind with its shadowy darkness. 

The idiot, indeed, often appears so little more 
than a laughing or a dancing vegetable, that pity 
yields to curiosity and mirth j and, instead of 
mourning, we work into the plot and incidents of 
a novel or a stage farce either that strange mix- 
ture of weakness and cunning which is delineated 
in Davie Gellatly, or the absolute imbecility of 
Audrey, Slender, and Sir Andrew Aguecheek. 

But this melancholy being is no.t always a soli- 
tary curiosity. In many districts, especially in the 
stream-fed valleys of Europe and Asia, nature fails, 
by wholesale, in the development of that " paragon 
of animals," man. 

Such are the Capots, or Cretins, of Chinese Tar- 
tary, as we learn from Sir George Staunton ; those 
of the Rhone and Tyrolese valleys ; the Coliberts 
of Rochelle ; the Cagneux of Brittany ; the Gaffos 
of Navarre ; the Gavachos of Spain ; and the Gez- 
itani of the Pyrenees. 

The condition of the lowest class of these wretch- 
ed beings is indeed that of idiocy, their intellect- 
F f 2 



342 ABSTRACTION OF IDIOCY. 

ual power being little more than the mental blank 
which would mark the acephalous, or brainless 
monsters, could such abortions attain the age of 
maturity. It is mere animal life, with the very 
faintest stamp of intelligence. 

The Cretin is from four to five feet high, cadaver- 
ous, flabby, the head immensely out of proportion, 
the skin studded with livid eruptions, the eyes blear 
and squinting, the lips slavering, the limbs weak 
and crooked ; and (like the Stulbings of Swift) the 
senses are imperfect, the hearing and speech often 
absolutely lost, the expression being that of a fool 
or a satyr. And dissection demonstrates the fre- 
quent causes of all this ; for, in the scull of these 
beings, we often find a bluish jelly instead of 
healthy brain. This diseased pulp is thus the 
source of both animal and intellectual apathy. 
The idiot will often seem insensible to pain, while 
his flesh is burning ; and objects or subjects do not 
cause sufficient impression on this pulpy brain to 
produce their image, so that the being may almost 
live without a sense. 

Cast. This is a dreary, but, I suppose, a faithful 
picture, and shows us one of those impressive con- 
trasts which nature is fraught with. The Cretin 
dwarf amid the gigantic sublimity of the Alps ; the 
lava stream rolling over the chestnut groves of Val- 
ombrosa ; the malaria that steams up from the Pon- 
tine even to Albano ; the murky sulphur-cloud 
that floats over Avernus and the Solfaterra ; and 
the poison-snake creeping among the honeyed flow- 
ers and purple festoons which gild the prairies and 
interlace the forests of Columbia, show us how in- 
timately are blended the lights and shadows of 
creation. Yet Evelyn will let me ask him if there 
are not many beautiful stories, which we may have 
deemed the creation of poesy, proving that idiot- 



WANDERING. 343 

ism is not always definite and permanent. I ought 
to blush while I recite them. The romance of 
Cymon and Iphigenia is not a mere fable. I have 
heard a story of a youth who was an idiot to his 
seventeenth year. At this time he saw a beautiful 
girl, and instantly felt deep and devoted love for 
her, and became, from this almost divine influence, 
as acute in intellect as his playmates. 

Astr. And whatwriteth the quaint Anatomist of 
Melancholy ! " We read in the lives of the Fathers 
a story of a child that was brought up in the wil- 
derness from his infancy by an old hermite. Now 
come to man's estate, he saw by chance two comely 
women wandering in the woods. He asked the 
old man what creatures they were. He told him 
fayries. After a while talking obiter, the hermit 
demanded of him which was the pleasantest sight 
that he ever saw in his life. He readily replied, 
the two fayries he espied in the wilderness. So 
that without doubt there is some secret loadstone 
in a beautiful woman, a magnetique power." 

Ida. We do not hold your gallantry lightly, As- 
trophel ; there is some hope of your conversion. 

Ev. That mind is termed weak where there is a 
want of the power of fixing the attention to one 
object, a wandering of the imaginative faculty. A 
train of ideas arises, between the links of which 
there is some remote relation; but its beginning 
and end may appear so dissonant, that the absent 
person will fail to recognise the connexion, until, 
by an effort to retrace the steps of thought, the 
mystery is developed. 

Ida. The subjects of this form of re very are, I 
presume, the wool-gatherers of society, being " ev- 
erything by turns, and nothing long ;" and often, like 
the dog in the fable, losing the substance while 
they grasp at the shadow ; others employ their time 
by sitting 



344 ILLUSIVE ABSTRACTION. 

" Musing all alone, 
Building castles in the air," 

forming plans and projecting schemes which shall 
fill men's minds with wonder, and their own pock- 
ets with gold. 

But these castle-builders are, alas ! but the dupes 
of their own mad fancy. The card-house is near- 
ly finished, and one imprudent touch of the child 
topples it down headlong. One of the most salu- 
tary lessons on this foible is the fable of the Per- 
sian visionary, the glassman Alnaschar, who, by 
rehearsing one kick of the foot, that was to indi- 
cate his despotic will, broke into ten thousand pie- 
ces the basket of merchandise which, by its accu- 
mulating profits, was to raise him to the highest 
dignities. Such are the results of self-glamourie 
or castle-building. 

Ev. It is a moral lesson of great worth, dear 
Ida. But these wanderings are often assimilating 
the true delirium of fever, of which the dreams of 
Piranesi are examples. In his sketches of these 
illusions he figures himself as ascending by steps 
so high that he at length vanishes into the clouds. 

Now there are many curious instances of forget- 
fulness, as there may be a confusion of ideas from 
this deficiency of concentration, memory being, as 
it were, deranged. From study, or intense thought, 
a jumble of strange ideas will sometimes force 
themselves involuntarily on the mind, displacing or 
confusing the subject of meditation. 

Thus a German, of the name of Spalding, of 
high attainments, informs us that, after great mental 
labour, he was intending to write this receipt : 
" fifty dollars, being one half-year's rate," but quite 
unconsciously concluded it thus : " fifty dollars 
through the salvation of Bra." And the author of 
the " Spiritual Treasury," Mason, during his devo- 



ILLUSIVE ABSTRACTION. 345 

tion to its composition, had, as he believed, taken 
the address of a visiter on whom he was to wait ; 
but on referring to his note, he read, not the ad- 
dress, but " Acts ii., verse 8." 

Children have naturally a want of power of con- 
centration. I have told you that if a new or more 
attractive object strikes their sight, they will drop 
that which they were holding ; and Foote would 
often, while taking a pinch, let his snuffbox fall 
from his hand, if for a moment his attention was 
diverted. 

Astr. The reverse of wandering, then, you term 
conccntrativeness. You would not stigmatize the 
passive or involuntary form of abstraction as the 
revery of a monomaniac. 

Ev. No. As attention is concentration of a sense, 
abstraction is the concentration or attention of the 
mind ; therefore the power of fixing the senses and 
forgetting the mind is attention, that of fixing the 
mind and forgetting the senses is abstraction — phi- 
losophy, if you will. 

The active form, the power of fixing the atten- 
tion on one subject, or of separating ideas and 
bringing them into association on one point, is the 
great characteristic of the philosopher and the math- 
ematician. That inattention to minutice during 
this abstraction has, I grant, caused the shafts of 
satire to be profusely flung at many a "learned pun- 
dit;" for the jokes of Rabelais are eclipsed by the 
eccentricities of our sages : Dominie Sampson is 
no caricature. 

As I trace these forms of revery from monoma- 
nia to its curious contrast, the folic raisonnante of 
men of one idea (in which there is an aberration 
of intellect, or want of consciousness on all subjects 
but one), and so on to philosophical abstraction, we 
shall learn, not without some humility, how close 



346 ILLUSIVE ABSTRACTION. 

an alliance does really exist between great wits 
and madness. 

The records of history and fiction teem with the 
illusions of the monomaniacs from intense impres- 
sion. The madness of Ophelia and of Lear are true 
and faithful illustrations of the effects of brooding 
over sorrow. In the monarch, indeed, that one mo- 
mentary glimpse of reason when the word " king," 
like an electric shock, falls on his ear, and for an 
instant lights up his intellect, which as suddenly 
darkness again overshadows, beautifully shows 
forth by contrast this madness of one idea. 

Dr. Gooch relates the case of a lady, who, in 
consequence of an alarm of fire, believed that she 
was the Virgin Mary, and that her head was con- 
stantly encircled by a brilliant halo or glory. 

A gentleman, on narrowly escaping from the 
earthquake at Lisbon, fell into a state of delirium 
whenever the word " earthquake" was pronounced 
in his hearing. 

In " Pechlin" we read of a lady who gazed with 
painless interest on the comet of 1681, until she ob- 
served it through a telescope of high power; the 
terror was so intense that she was frightened to 
death even in a few days. 

Dr. Morrison relates the case of an insane gen- 
tleman who had consulted a gipsy, and was instant- 
ly in a state of high excitement whenever a subject 
associated with her prophecies was alluded to. 

My friend Dr. Uwins informed me of an intel- 
lectual young gentleman, who, from some morbid 
association with the idea of an elephant, was struck 
by an horrific spasm whenever the word was na- 
med, or even written before him ; and to such a 
pitch was this infatuation carried, that elephant pa- 
per, if he were sensible it were such, produced the 
same effect. 



ILLUSIVE ABSTRACTION. 347 

The Reverend John Mason, of Water Stratford, 
evinced in everything sound judgment, except that 
he believed that he was Elias, and foretold the ad- 
vent of Christ, who was to commence the millen- 
nium at Stratford. 

Dr. Abercrombie writes of a young botanist who 
had gained a prize : he thought he was in a boat 
sailing to Greenwich on a botanical excursion, 
and conversed rationally on all points but that of 
the prize, which he asserted another student had 
gained. 

Hear, too, another rhapsody of the " Opium-eat- 
er." After a close and intense study of the works 
of Livy, the words Consul Romanus seemed to 
haunt his mind. " At a clapping of hands would 
be heard the heart-rending sounds of ' Consul Ro- 
manus;' and immediately came sweeping by, in 
gorgeous paludaments, Paulus Marius, girt round 
by a company of centurions, with the crimson tunic 
hoisted on a spear, and followed by the alalagmos 
of the Roman legions." 

There is a story (written in the seventeenth cen- 
tury) of a youth, who in a playful frolic put a ring 
on the marriage finger of a marble Venus ; and a 
strange illusion came upon him that she had thus 
become his wife, and, in obedience to the injunc- 
tions of the ceremony, came to his bed when the 
sable canopy of night was spread around them. 
So intense was this illusion, and so cold and love- 
less was his heart withal, that, as the story goes, an 
exorcist was employed to dissolve the spell which 
had so firmly bound him. 

Ida. I believe it was Mrs. Barry who (as we 
read in the " Last Essays of Elia") averred that, 
when playing the child of Isabella, she felt the 
burning tears of Mrs. Porter fall on her neck as 
6he was breathing o'er her some pathetic sentence. 



348 ILLUSIVE ABSTRACTION. 

Even the study of Lady Macbeth, in midnight soli- 
tude, so intensely excited the imagination of Mrs. 
Siddons, that Campbell says, as she was disrobing 
herself in her chamber, she trembled with affright 
even at the rustling of her own silk attire. 

Ev. I could add many stories to yours, Ida. 
This sensibility, if protracted or in excess, becomes 
the Panophobia of Esquirol. He attended once a 
lady whom the slightest noise alarmed, and who 
was wont to scream with affright at the simple 
moving of herself in bed. 

From the journal of Esquirol I will quote other 
fragments, in which we see that every object was 
associated with one image. 

" During our promenade he (a gallant general) 
interrupted me several times in the midst of a very 
connected conversation, saying, ' Do you hear how 
they repeat the words '■'•coward, jealous V y &c. 
This illusion was produced by the noise of the 
leaves and the whistling of the wind among the 
branches of the trees, which appeared to him well- 
articulated sounds ; and, although I had each time 
combated it with success, the illusion returned 
whenever the wind agitated the trees anew. 

" A young married man was in a state of fury 
whenever he saw a woman leaning on a man's arm, 
being convinced that it was his oivn wife. I took 
him to the theatre at the commencement of his con- 
valescence, but as soon as a lady entered the saloon 
accompanied by a gentleman, he became agitated, 
and called out eagerly several times, ' That is she, 
that is she.' I could hardly help laughing, and we 
were obliged to retire. 

" A lady twenty-three years of age, afflicted with 
hysterical madness, used to remain constantly at 
the windows of her apartment during the summer. 
When she saw a beautiful cloud in the sky, she 



ILLUSIVE ABSTRACTION. 349 

screamed out ' Garnerin, Garnerin, come and take 
me!' and repeated the same invitation until the 
cloud disappeared. She mistook the clouds for 
balloons sent up by Garnerin." 

Cast. There is here as much romance as when 
Ajax mistook a drove of oxen for the armed Greeks, 
or Don Quixote the windmills for a band of Span- 
ish giants. 

Ev. Again, Dr. Beddoes relates the case of a 
scholar who locked himself up to study the Reve- 
lation. The confinement brought on dyspeptic pains 
and spasms, and he was persuaded that " the mon- 
ster blasphemy, with ten heads, was preying on his 
vitals." 

The Reverend Simon Brown died with the con- 
viction that his rational soul was annihilated by a 
special fiat of the Divine will ; and a patient in the 
Friends' " Retreat," at York, thought he had no 
soul, heart, or lungs. 

From " Tulpius" we learn that the wife of Salo- 
mon Galmus sank into a state of extreme melan- 
choly from the deep conviction that she was a vis- 
itant from the tomb, but sent back to the world with- 
out her heart, for God had detained that in heaven. 

Such illusions are sometimes excited by wounds 
of the brain. A soldier of the field of Austerlitz 
was struck with a delirious conviction that he was 
but an ill-made model of his former self. " You 
ask how Pere Lambert is" (he would say); "he 
is dead, killed at Austerlitz ; that you now see is 
a mere machine made in his likeness." He would 
then often lapse into a state of catalepsy insensible 
to every stimulus. 

Dr. Mead tells us of an Oxford student who or- 
dered the passing bell to be rung for him, and went 
himself to the belfry to instruct the ringers. He 
returned to his bed only to die. 
Gg 



350 ILLUSIVE ABSTRACTION. 

A Bourbon prince thought himself dead, and re- 
fused to eat until his friends invited him to dine 
with Turenne and other French heroes long since 
departed. 

There was a tradesman who thought he was a 
seven-shilling piece, and advertised himself thus : 
" If my wife presents me for payment, don't change 
me." Accuse me not of transatlantic plagiarism. 

Bishop Warburton tells us of a man who thought 
himself a goose fie; and Dr. Ferriday, of Man- 
chester, had a patient who thought he had swallow 
ed the devil. 

So, indeed, thought Luther. As in Hudibras, 

" Did not the devil appear to Martin 
Luther in Germany for certain ?." 

In Paris there lived a man who thought he had, 
with others, been guillotined, and when Napoleon 
was emperor, their heads were all restored, but 
in the scramble he got the wrong one. 

And there is the " Visiter of Phantaste," in the 
old play of " Lingua," who exclaims, " No marvel, 
for when I beheld my fingers, I saw they were as 
transparent as glass." 

You perceive that the illusions of Pope's "Rape 
of the Lock" are not all fictions : the maids who 
fancied they were turned into bottles were not 
more in error than these philosophers with their 
maladie imaginaire. 

Cast. Is there not wisdom, Evelyn, in nursing 
some of these innocent illusions'? . I remember Kot- 
zebue, in his " Journey to Paris," relates the fol- 
lowing anecdote of a young girl romantically in 
love. Her lover had often accompanied her on 
the harp : he died, and his harp had remained in 
her room. After the first excess of her despair, 
she sunk into the deepest melancholy, and much 
time elapsed ere she would sit down to her instru-. 



ILLUSIVE ABSTRACTION. 351 

ment. At last she did so, gave some touches, and, 
hark ! the harp, tuned alike, resounded in echo. 
The good girl was at first seized with a secret 
shuddering, but soon felt a kind of soft melancholy : 
she was firmly persuaded that the spirit *of her 
lover was softly sweeping the strings of the in- 
strument. The harpsichord, from this moment, 
constituted her only pleasure, as it afforded her the 
certainty that her lover was still hovering near her. 
One of those unfeeling men who want to know and 
clear up everything once entered her apartment. 
The girl instantly begged him to be quiet, for at 
that very moment the dear harp spoke most dis- 
tinctly. Being informed of the amiable illusion 
which overcame her reason, he laughed, and, with 
a great display of learning, proved to her by ex- 
perimental physics that all this was very natural. 
From that instant the maiden grew melancholy, 
drooped, and soon after died. 

Ev. Truth is not always to be spoken, nor too 
much energy exerted in our treatment ; for many 
a mad act, as it will be called, is resorted to as a 
relief 

Tirouane de Mericourt was wont to saturate her 
bedclothes with cold water, then lie down on them. 
Although an extreme remedy, it might yield her 
relief from burning pains. In the darker ages she 
would have been chained and scourged. 

But from Marcus Donatus we read the following 
case of still more melancholy interest ; another il- 
lustration of your question, dear Casialy : 

" Vicentinus believed himself too large to pass 
one of his doorways. To dispel this illusion, it 
was resolved by his physician that he should be 
dragged through this aperture by force. This erro- 
neous dictate was obeyed ; but, as he was forced 
along, Vicentinus screamed out in agony that his 



I 



352 ABSTRACTION OF INTELLECT. 

limbs were fractured, and the flesh torn from hi3 
bones. In this dreadful delusion, with terrific im- 
precations against his murderers, he died." 



ABSTRACTION OF INTELLECT. 

" I love to cope him in these sullen fits, 
For then he's full of matter." — As You Like It. 

Astr. So that, in these cases, it is one faculty 
only which is interrupted, and not the combined in- 
tellect. But all the faculties but one may be de- 
ranged, may they not \ 

Ev. Yes. When the patient is insane on all 
points but one, we term it " Folie raisonnante." 

The very idiot, indeed, is often fond of most ex- 
act arrangement. The savage of Aveyron instantly 
put things in order when they were deranged. 

White, in his " History of Selborne," records 
the propensities of an idiot, who, he says, was a 
very Merops-apiaster, or bee-bird. Honey-bees, 
humble-bees, and wasps were his prey : he would 
seize them, disarm them of their weapons, and suck 
their bodies for the sake of their honey-bags. Ex- 
cept in this adroitness, he had no understanding. 

Pinel states the case of a mechanical genius 
who became insane, believing his head to be chan- 
ged. Yet he invented mechanism of the most in- 
tricate combinations. We are informed, too, of a 
clergyman who was ever insane but when deliv- 
ering his discourses from the pulpit. 

I believe some parts of a national establishment 
were constructed from the plans of one of its in- 
mates, who was, to all other intents and purposes, 
a madman. 

Dr. Uwins once told me that some of the lines 
in his biographical work were written by a maniac 



ABSTRACTION OF INTELLECT. 353 

in the Hoxton Asylum, who was ever aware of the 
approach of his mania. These lines were thought 
to be among the best in the work. 

Nay, idiots will sometimes reason, and work out 
a syllogism. I think Dr. Conolly relates a story 
of two who quarrelled, because each asserted that 
he was the Holy Ghost : at length, one decided 
that the other teas the Holy Ghost, and that he 
could not be, because there were not two. 

From this " folie raisonnante" there is an easy 
transition to that eccentricity which seems to be a 
set-off against the strength of mind of the deep 
thinker. The permanent derangement, however, 
we term insaiiity ; the transient, eccentricity. 

Marullus informs us that Bernard rode all day 
long by the Lemnian Lake, and at last inquired 
where he was. Archimedes rushed into the street 
naked from the bath, in an ecstasy at having dis- 
covered the alloy in the crown of Syracuse. Pinel 
tells us of a priest, who, in an abstract mood, felt 
no pain, although part of his body was burning. 

" Viote," says Zimmerman, " during his fits of 
mathematical abstraction, would often remain sleep- 
less and foodless for three days and nights." 

And Plato thus records an instance of the ab- 
straction of Socrates : " One morning he fell into 
one of these raptures of contemplation, and contin- 
ued standing in the same posture till about noon. 
In the evening some Ionian soldiers went out, and, 
wrapping themselves up warm, lay down by him 
in the open field, to observe if he would continue 
in that posture all night, which he did until the 
morning, and as soon as the sun rose he saluted it 
and retired." This is mental abstraction with a 
vengeance ! 

Astr. I will laugh with you at these oddities, 
Evelyn ; yet not a whit less ludicrous are some of 
23 G g 2 



354 ABSTRACTION OF INTELLECT. 

the vagaries of the learned Thebans oimoctern times. 
The abstractions of Newton were proverbial. It may 
not be true that he once inserted the little finger of 
a lady, whose hand he was holding, into his pipe in- 
stead of a tobacco-stopper, or that he made a small 
hole in his study door for the exit of a kitten by the 
side of a large one for the cat : it is certain, how- 
ever, that he was once musing by his fire, with his 
knees close to the bars, when, finding his legs in 
danger of being grilled, he rang his bell, and, in 
a rage, desired his servant to take away the grate. 

Dr. Hamilton, author of the acute " Essay on the 
National Debt," visited his college class in the 
morning with his own black silk stocking on one 
leg and his wife's white cotton on the other, and 
would sometimes occupy the whole class time by 
repeatedly removing the students' hats from his 
table, which they as often placed there. He would 
run against a cow, and beg madam's pardon, hoping 
he had not hurt her ; and he would bow politely to 
his wife in the street without recognition. Yet, 
with all this, he would, at any time, directly con- 
verse on a scientific subject beautifully and elo- 
quently. 

Bacon, the sculptor, in a rich full dress, was fin- 
ishing Howard's statue in St. Paul's, and, being 
cold, put on a ragged green and red shag waist- 
coat. In this trim he walked out to call on some 
ladies in Doctors' Commons. On his return, he 
told his son that they were sadly disposed to laugh 
about nothing. On being: convinced, however, of his 
condition, he remembered the people he passed also 
giggled, and cried out, " He does it for a wager." 

Hogarth paid a visit, in his new carriage, to the 
lord-mayor, and, after his audience, walked home 
in his state clothes, leaving his carriage at a private 
door of the Mansion House. 



ABSTRACTION OF INTELLECT. 355 

Dr. Harvest, of Ditton, a very learned man, 
would unconsciously allow his horse to be loosened 
from his grasp, and walk home with the bridle on 
his arm. He would walk into his church on Sun- 
day with his fowling-piece. He would write a let- 
ter, address it, and send it to three different jier sons. 
He lost a lady, the daughter of a bishop, as his 
wife, by going out to catch gudgeons, forgetting 
that it was the morning of his marriage ceremony ; 
and he once threw a glass of wine at backgammon, 
and swallowed the dice ! 

After this we can no longer call caricatures the 
abstract philosopher who boiled his watch, and held 
the egg in his hand as the time-keeper ; or the 
American, who put his candle to bed and blew 
himself out ; or the lady who believed herself to 
be a post-letter, but waited patiently until the let- 
ter-sorter had examined her, to ascertain if she 
was single or double. 

Ev. There is some hope of you now, dear As- 
trophel, for you are returning to matters of fact. 

From the deep interest of dramatic scenes may 
spring the same apathy as that which you have il- 
lustrated. Dr. Fordyce writes of one who forgot 
he was sitting on a hard bench when Garrick 
brought in his dead Cordelia in his arms. And 
even the impression of fatigue and pain will often, 
for a time, leave us when we are gazing on archi- 
tectural or picturesque beauty. 

Ida. Are not those minds which are easily influ- 
enced by morbid sensibility, the minutiae of exist- 
ence, often thus depressed into a condition some- 
what resembling the moroseness of these half-idiots % 

Ev. Ay, even the mighty minds of heroes and of 
monarchs. Queen Elizabeth was often wont to sit 
alone, in the dark, in sorrow and in tears. We 
know not if the fate of Essex or of Mary were the 



S56 ABSTRACTION OF INTELLECT. 

cause, but the marble mind of Elizabeth was dis- 
solvedbefore she died. In Sully's " Memoires," also, 
we read that the solitude of Charles IX., of France, 
was saddened by remorse, for his memory was ever 
pealing in his ear the shrieks and groans of the 
massacre of St. Bartholomew. During this influ- 
ence we may often find that the features or ac- 
tions are so deeply expressive as to prove an in- 
voluntary, though correct index of the thought. 
According to the passions or subjects which occu- 
py the mind will be the play of feature or the 
movement of the body. 

" We might almost suppose the body thought." 

This " brown study" is the slightest form of that 
state which the French term emiui, in which the 
mind too often is left to prey upon itself, having, 
as it were, no sympathy with the world. Its more 
severe symptoms are those of misanthropy, melan- 
choly, and hypochondriasis, inducing but too often 
that extreme tedium vitce, the climax of which is 
suicide. Out of the first, which is but the mere 
ripple of derangement, we may be laughed or 
coaxed ; nay, it may yield to the positive suffering 
of the body. The second is like the deep, still 
water, the awful calmness antecedent to a tempest. 
In the words of Lord Erskine, " Reason is not 
driven from her seat, but distraction sits down on 
it along with her, holds her trembling on it, and 
frights her from her propriety. And then comes 
often o'er the mind a very coward sentiment, echo- 
ing the demoniac resolution of Spenser's " Cave of 
Despair :" 

" What if some little payne the passage have, 
That makes frayle flesh to fear the better wave ? 
Is not short payne well borne that brings long ease, 
And layes the soule to sleepe in quiet grave ?" 

Ida. Despair will often rouse even the most sen- 



ABSTRACTION OF INTELLECT. 357 

sitive beings to the most patient fortitude. How 
is this % 

Ev. Not rouse, but depress ; not fortitude, but 
apathy. I could excite your deepest sympathy and 
wonder, Ida, by the history of the young and beau- 
tiful Ann G n, who was hung for child-murder, 

in whom the convulsive agony which followed her 
sentence at length ended in a resignation which 
some would term heroism. During the nights in 
which I myself watched her slumbers, both from 
deep scientific interest and the request of her 
judges, her actions were automatic ; her existence 
was one perfect trance ; and she met her fate as if 
life and its consciousness had long been parted. 

Even an intense blow will sometimes, as it were, 
annihilate sensibility, creating an icy apathy to all 
subsequent inflictions, which was the effect on 
Mandrin during the tortures of the wheel, for he 
smiled at the third blow to find that it hurt him so 
little. 

Ida. Then we are to contrast the state of the 
unhappy girl with the voluntary endurance of hero- 
ism depending on the power of concentrating mind ? 
The almost superhuman endurance of pain is finely 
displayed among the North American Indians, who 
even chant their own death-song calmly amid worse 
than the tortures of the Inquisition, or sustain, with 
a smile, those probationary trials for the dignities 
of a chief, or the admission to the class of warriors 
that are modelled with all the refinement of cru- 
elty. On the banks of the Orinoco, especially (if 
Robertson be right, or Gumilla, his authority, are 
to be believed), the ordeal begins by a rigid fast, 
reductive of the body's energy ; then commences 
a flaying of his body, by lashes as dreadful as the 
knout, by the hands of the assembled chiefs, and 
then, if the slightest sensibility be evinced, he is 



358 ABSTRACTION OF INTELLECT. 

disgraced forever. His raw and reeking flesh is 
then exposed to the stings and venom of insects and 
reptiles, and again suspended over the scorching 
and suffocating flames of herbs of the most disgust- 
ing odour ; and, to close this tale of torture, it is 
not seldom that the victim sinks in mortal agonies 
beneath the dreadful ordeal. 

Ev. The two great springs of voluntary endu- 
rance of pain are religion and honour. Thus, among 
other heroic acts of England's martyrs, Cranmer 
held the apostate hand which signed his recanta- 
tion in the midst of the flames until it was toasted. 
And the unyielding fortitude with which the victim 
bore the rack and other excruciating tortures of 
the Popish Inquisition is almost beyond belief. 

The fanaticism of the wild enthusiasts of the 
East it were profanation to call religion ; but, with 
the hope of rejoining her husband in the realms of 
bliss, the Hindoo widow clasps his corpse in her 
arms, and, without a sigh, sets the torch to his fu- 
neral pile. And, to inherit the paradise of Brah- 
ma, the Fakir or Yoghee keeps his fist clinched 
for years, until the nails grow through his hand, or 
forces the hooks between his ribs, and whirls him- 
self aloft until he expires, or throws himself pros- 
trate beneath the crushing wheels of Juggernaut. 

It is written that Cardan rendered himself, by 
great efforts, insensible to external irritants. 

And analogous to this was the almost superhu- 
man effort of that determined action of Muley Mo- 
loch, quoted in the " Spectator," from Vertot's 
" Revolutions of Portugal :" " In a condition of 
extreme prostration, he was borne in a litter with 
his army. On the sounding of a retreat, although 
in a half-dying state, he leaped from the litter, and 
led his quailing troops to a charge, which ended 
jn victory. Ere this was accomplished his life was 



ABSTRACTION OF INTELLECT. 359 

fast ebbing, and, reclining on his litter, and enjoin- 
ing the secrecy of his staff, with his finger on his 
lip, he died." 

But my analysis will be incomplete if I do not 
revert to a point that I had almost forgotten. These 
abstract moods have often been confounded with 
the visions of slumber, being adduced as proofs of 
the perfection of mind during sleep. 

You reminded me, Astrophel, of the brilliant 
parody composed by Mackenzie, of the versifica- 
tion of Voltaire and La Fontaine, of the solution 
of the difficult problem by Condorcet, of the dis- 
cussion of abstruse points of policy by Cabanis. 
You might have added Condillac, who asserts that 
when he was composing the " Cours d* Etudes" he 
often left a chapter unfinished, but had it all in his 
mind when he awoke. And Franklin assures us 
that he often dreamed of the issue of important 
events in which he was engaged, believing the vis- 
ion to be the influence of inspired prophecy. Dr. 
Haycock, of Oxford, too, is said to have composed 
and preached sermons in his sleep, in despite even 
of bufferings. 

These are not dreams, but the reveries of phi- 
losophers and poets. The faculties of perception 
are suspended ; one only object occupies the mind, 
and the impression on the memory is vivid and 
permanent. Of this revery I do not recollect a 
more interesting illustration than the " Dream of 
Tartini," and its exquisite product, "La Sonata di 
Diavolo." This admirable violinist and once es- 
teemed composer relates the following anecdote 
as the origin of his chef-d'oeuvre, the " Devil's Son- 
ata:" " One night, it was in the year 1713, 1 dream- 
ed that I had made over my soul to his satanic 
majesty. Everything was done to my wink : the 
faithful menial anticipated my fondest wishes. 



360 ABSTRACTION OF INTELLECT. 

Among other freaks, it came into my head to put 
the violin into his hands, for I was anxious to see 
whether he was capable of producing anything 
worth hearing upon it. Conceive my astonishment 
at his playing a sonata, with such dexterity and 
grace as to surpass whatever the imagination can 
conceive. I was so much delighted, enraptured, 
and entranced by his performance, that I was un- 
able to fetch another breath, and, in this state, I 
awoke. I jumped up and seized upon my instru- 
ment, in the hope of reproducing a portion, at least, 
of the unearthly harmonies I had heard in my dream, 
but all in vain ; the music which I composed under 
the inspiration I must admit the best I have ever 
written, and of right I have called it the ' Devil's 
Sonata ;' but the falling off between that piece and 
the sonata which had laid such fast hold of my im- 
agination is so immense, that I would rather have 
broken my violin into a thousand fragments, and 
renounced music for good and all, than, had it been 
possible, have been robbed of the enjoyment which 
the remembrance afforded me." 

In the cases of precocious children, who are said 
to have " lisp'd in numbers," I do not doubt that 
the secret may be referred to this concentration of 
genius. Mozart composed a sonata at the age of 
four. The precocious little girl, Louisa Vinning, 
who was called the " Infant Sappho" has yet 
eclipsed Mozart in this : that at the age of two 
years and eight months she sang repeatedly a mel- 
ody perfectly new, and so perfect, that it was writ- 
ten down from her lips, and entitled, " The Infant's 
Dream." During all this, the little creature was 
in such a state of apparent abstraction, that it was 
believed by all around her that she walked and 
talked in her sleep. 

These mental concentrations can, by some en- 



ABSTRACTION OF INTELLECT. 361 

thusiasts, be produced at pleasure. The paroxysm 
of the improvisatore, for instance. But it is an ef- 
fort which, like the dark hour of the Caledonian 
seer, is not endured with impunity ; it points, in- 
deed, emphatically to the limit beyond which mind 
should not be strained. 

The Marquis de Moschati expressed himself to 
us as experiencing excitement like intoxication 
when he sat himself to compose, and threw his 
whole soul into his subject. It commenced with 
irregular and laborious breathing, excessive palpi- 
tations, vertigo, tinnitus auriwn, the perception of 
objects being lost. Then came romantic fancies, 
like the visions of opium, " thoughts that breathe, 
and words that burn." At the conclusion was felt 
excessive exhaustion, and a state of mild catalepsy 
ensued for five or six days together. This excited 
talent, therefore, is an evanescent madness. 

Cast. Another fling at poesy. "Were I an im- 
provisatrice, you would not so libel my inspiration. 
" Listen, lords and lady gay." In the summer 
of 18 — , after the Eisteddfod at Cardiff, we wan- 
dered over the hills to Caerphilly, the gigantic 
towers of Owain Glyndwr. 

As I lay under the celebrated Hanging Tower, 
which is projecting eleven feet beyond its base, I 
reflected on the strange circumstance of the arrest 
of so gigantic a mass in its progress to prostration. 
" What," I exclaimed, " is the power by which it 
is suspended ]" My imagination heightened my 
revery, and placed before me the image of the De- 
stroyer, with his emblematic scythe and glass, and 
he answered me thus : 

"Half-dreaming mortal, listen ! it is 7, 
Time, the destroyer, whose gigantic arm 
Lifted this pond'rous ruin from its base. 
Why hangs it thus, arrested in its course, 
In bold defiance of attraction's law ? 

Hh 



362 ABSTRACTION OF INTELLECT. 

Why, like its once proud lord, renown'd Glyndwr, 

Sinks not its mouldering grandeur to the ground? 

Behold an emblem of vitality ! 

A type of mortal man, of thee, of all ! 

Like this gray wall, thy tott'ring steps are staid, 

And on a thread thy fragile life is hung ; 

Yet leaning, ever leaning, to the grave. 

One moment more, an atom of an age, 

This mould'ring ruin, trembling on its base, 

May, like the marble shafts of lone Palmyra, 

Be hurl'd to earth, and crumble into dust ; 

And, like the ruin, thou !" 

And yet I was not mad. 

Ev. I talk not of a gentle heart like yours, fair 
Castaly, but of that extreme when ideas are re- 
ceived by a mind nearly exhausted, and lie for a 
while dormant. As sleep and fatigue wear off, 
and consciousness returns, these images are sud- 
denly and brilliantly lighted up. If intense im- 
pression shall have been made on the heart or 
mind, intense will be the abstraction of the enthu- 
siast. Until one thought is touched, the patient is 
sane ; but, when the chord vibrates, then, as in 
the pathetic episode of Sterne's Maria, the parox- 
ysm is expended in a flood of tears, or in a mad 
fit, or in a gush of wildest music. 

To the latter cause we owe many beauties of 
composition. Demarini, the Italian tragedian, act- 
ed a prison-scene before Paganini, in which, with 
the pathos of deep distress, the victim prayed for 
death. The maestro retired to bed, but not to 
sleep ; his excited brain relieved its painful sym- 
pathies by the composition of the "Adagio apas- 
sionato." 

Carl Maria Von Weber witnessed the waltzing 
of his wife with a gallant cavalier. He retired in 
a mood of jealous phrensy, and expressed the ideas 
which rankled in his heart by the "Invitation a la 
Walse." 

Astr. Well, is there not something special in 
all this % 



ABSTRACTION OF INTELLECT. 363 

Ev. Yes, truly — a power imparted to some, 
withheld from others — genius. 

Astr. Yet, in explanation of this abstract rev- 
ery, the phrenologist will, I dare say, satisfy him- 
self by merely deciding that the organ of concen- 
trativeness is strongly developed. 

Ev. It is clear, at least, that the deep interest 
of the subject .of reflection overbalances the influ- 
ence of the external senses. The impression of 
objects is either too slight or rapid to produce 
perception, or (in other words), however the im- 
pression may be imparted to the brain by the nerve, 
the brain is not sensible of it, and there is therefore 
no perception. 

So intense, indeed, has been this influence, that 
Pliny contemplated the volcanic philosophy amid 
the ashy cloud of Vesuvius by which he was de- 
stroyed. And Archimedes was so intent in solving 
a problem during the siege of Syracuse, that no 
sense of danger impelled him to avoid the storm, 
or fly from the dagger of the assassin. 

While Parmegiano was painting at Rome the 
" Vision of St. Jerome," which now adorns the 
National Gallery of England, the famous siege of 
that city was concluded by its spoliation. Yet 
Parmegiano (absorbed with his painting) was un- 
conscious of the tumult, until his studio was burst 
open by some of the soldiers of the enemy. A 
similar story is told, also, of Protogenes, when 
Demetrius was laying siege to Rhodes. 

Cast. The flappers of Laputa would soon have 
dispelled this revery. 

Ev. But if they had thus flourished their official 
bladders, perhaps the " Principia Mathematica" 
had not been written, for Newton explained the 
extent of his discoveries by his " always thinking 
unto them." 



364 ABSTRACTION OF INTELLECT. 

Somewhat like the effect of intense study on the 
mind, the muscles of the limbs will be influenced 
by one long-directed habit. Paganini was observed, 
on board a steamboat, constantly to repose on the 
sofa. During this state of revery, his left arm as- 
sumed the peculiar attitude in which he held his 
violin, until he saw that he was noticed, when he 
altered its position. 

The right hand of Benjamin West, of which I 
saw a posthumous model at Lord de Tabley's, ap- 
peared to have taken that form in which he was 
wont to hold the pencil. 

By this concentration, this full possession of the 
mind, the wildness of fancy in the dark is often the 
source of terror ; but this is ever lessened or dis- 
pelled by any sound or sight which presents a sub- 
ject to the perceptive faculty. Such is the sudden 
glimmer of a light, the barking of a dog, or the al- 
most instinctive effort of the schoolboy, 

" Whistling aloud to keep his courage up." 

All these cases, then, indicate concentration of 
mind. " Mental conception is uninfluenced by con- 
scious perception." 

I may add that, in the heat of engagement, sol- 
diers and sailors are often unconscious of being 
even seriously wounded. In the battle of Lake 
Thrasymene, the armies of Rome and Carthage 
were so absorbed in the tumult and din of war, 
that an earthquake, which spread desolation around 
them, was unheeded by these determined soldiers. 

Ida. I have gleaned enough from your illustra- 
tions, Evelyn, to believe that we may explain 
by them that solemn and last revery of the dying, 
when all other ideas have ceased to influence but 
the most impressive — 

" The ruling passion strong in death ;" 

when earthly life is on the wane, and the spirit, in 



SOMNOLENCE. TRANCE. CATALEPSY. 365 

this expiring thought, takes its last farewell of the 
flesh. I remember some beautiful evidences of 
this influence. 

It was observed that Porson, after a paralytic 
fit, scarcely uttered a word of English, but to the 
last moment spoke Greek fluently. 

Dr. Adam (a master of Sir Walter Scott), on 
the subsidence of delirium, exclaimed, " It grows 
dark — the boys may dismiss ;" and instantly ex- 
pired. 

The last words of Dr. Abercrombie were ad- 
dressed to an imaginary patient, regarding the care 
of his digestive functions. 

Some time after the trial of the Bristol magis- 
trates, Lord Tenterden lapsed into a stupor from 
exhaustion. A short period before death he rallied, 
and, after conversing with his friends for a few 
minutes, he raised himself on his couch, and said, 
" Gentlemen of the jury, you may retire ;" and 
then fell back and expired. 



SOMNOLENCE.— TRANCE.— CATA- 
LEPSY. 

" In this borrowed likeness of shrunk death 
Thou shalt remain full two-and-forty hours, 
And then awake, as from a pleasant sleep." 

Romeo and Juliet. 

Cast. Evelyn, you have again bewildered my 
thoughts. Sleep, that should be the anodyne of the 
mind, has awakened afresh my curiosity. I am in 
a mood for mystery. Any more wonders 1 

Ev. The prototypes of sleep, dear Castaly, are 
all " mysteries," as you call them, and marked by 
ever-varying shades. 

The most impressive conditions of the mind are 
these : 

H h 2 



366 SOMNOLENCE. TRANCE. CATALEPSY. 

Unconscious and passive, as in sound sleep. 

Conscious, yet passive, as in dreaming. 

Conscious and willing, yet powerless, as in night- 
mare. 

Unconscious, yet active, as in somnambulism. 

If we go deeper in our analysis, we shall dis- 
cover a state more wondrous still than all we have 
unravelled, in which mind is unconscious, sensa- 
tionless, unwishing, motionless, powerless, as in 
trance or catalepsy ; an absolute apathy of body and 
complete oblivion of mind. And yet life is there ! 

In the dream of nightmare, you remember, there 
is a will, but no power. In the absolute senseless- 
ness of trance, all sympathy between the brain or 
spinal marrow, or the influence of the nerves of 
motion, or of the will on muscle, altogether cease. 

I will not fatigue you with varieties, such as 
carus, catalepsy, and the like, or with mere medi- 
cal definitions, as syncope or fainting, epilepsy, ap- 
oplexy, and their analogies. 

By the term trance I would define all those con- 
ditions in which there is protracted derangement of 
volition or the will, sensibility and voluntary action 
being suspended, while the vital functions are per- 
formed, yet with diminished energy ; the " deep 
sleep" of Paracelsus, Hieronymus, Fabricius, Cel- 
sus, and other writers of antiquity. 

In some, the rosy colour of the lips and cheeks 
will not fade ; in others, they are pale and blood- 
less ; the body becomes cold as marble, the pulse 
often imperceptible, and the vapour of breathing 
on a polished surface alone distinguishes the still 
living being from the perfect work of the sculptor. 
I have, however, had patients who were rosy when 
they fell asleep, but became pale about the end of 
the second day. 

Girls often smile sweetly in full catalepsy, but 



SOMNOLENCE. TRANCE. CATALEPSY. 367 

the countenance will become anxious as waking 
approaches ; and this must ever excite suspicion. 
The body, indeed, is, to the external world, dead ; 
for, although the cataleptic will often swallow food, 
while all the other muscles are in spasm, this may, 
I believe does, depend on mere irritability, by 
which, as I before told you, the brain is first ex- 
cited, and then directs a movement without the 
mind's feeling. Catalepsy is so peculiar to young 
females of extreme sensibility, that it may be con- 
sidered an intense hysteria, depending on certain 
sympathies, or resulting from sudden or powerful 
influences on the passions. The form of catalepsy 
marked by hysteria is least dangerous, but it is 
very stubborn. Probably this is the form so com- 
mon in Germany. 

Previous to the cataleptic acme girls are often 
maniacally violent, and will then suddenly regain 
their temper and their reason. They will sit and 
play with their fingers in a sullen mood, and the 
power of motion and speech and other acts of voli- 
tion may be alternately impaired or lost. In some, 
the sleep has been preceded by fits of lethargy, by 
lassitude, and inaptitude to exertion, and perhaps 
a propensity to sleep-walking. The decided state 
of catalepsy has begun in an epileptic convulsion. 
In all, I think, I have seen combined with this dis- 
order irregular determination of blood ; in one 
case, where the taste and smell were gone for four 
or five months, the climax was suicide by arsenic. 

The countenance is almost always placid in cata- 
leptic sleep, the eyes being turned up, the pupils 
dilated, but the eyelids closed. If the fit be the 
result of sudden fright, the features will remain as 
they were at that moment — the eyelid fixed, but 
the pupil usually sensible. The joints and muscles 
are pliable, and may be moulded to any form, but 



368 SOMNOLENCE. TRANCE. CATALEPSY. 

they remain in that position as rigidly fixed as the 
limbs of a lay figure, or the anchylosed joints of the 
self-torturing fakir — insensible to all stimuli, beat- 
ing, tickling, or pricking. 

I have seen patients lapse into a state of catalep- 
sy in a moment, without a struggle. I remember, 
during one of my visits to the asylum in Hoxton, a 
maniac, who often, in the midst of his occupation, 
became instantaneously a statue, leaning a little 
forward, one arm lifted up, and the index finger 
pointed as at some interesting object, the eye sta- 
ring and ghastly, and. the whole expression as of 
one rapt in an ecstasy of thought or vision. 

The waking from a trance, like the recovery 
from the asphyxy of drowning, is painful. It is 
attended with a struggle, and the hand is almost 
invariably placed firmly over the heart, as if its ac- 
tions were a painful effort to overcome congestion. 

In some cases, indeed, a purple hue will sudden- 
ly suffuse the cataleptic body ; the limbs are then 
extremely rigid, but become pliant when the healthy 
tint is restored. 

The sensation in the brain of the cataleptic, as 
of those recovering from drowning, resembles the 
pricking of needles, the circulation soon becoming 
accelerated. Hunger is usually intense when the 
patient awakes. The usual duration of catalepsy 
is from twenty to forty hours. The return of voli- 
tion is commonly marked by perspiration; this 
premonitory sign is often followed by a piercing 
shriek, as in the case of nightmare, and, indeed, in 
a slight degree, of an infant's cry as soon as it is 
born. 

It has appeared to me that the cataleptic is mark- 
ed by extremes of feeling and disposition. The 
sensibility either being too dull for the feeling of 
joy, or so intensely excited by pleasure as to ap- 



SOMNOLENCE. TRANCE. CATALEPSY. 369 

proach the confine of delirium. One of my pa- 
tients, in particular, who was an eighty-hour sleep- 
er, endured a metamorphosis from religious enthu- 
siasm to theatrical mania. Her Bible was discard- 
ed for romances and play-books, and even the most 
licentious volumes. 

Cast. I have read (I suppose in some moth-eaten 
tomes, enshrined I know not where) of a scholar of 
Lubeck, who slept seven years ; in Diogenes La- 
ertius, of Epimenides, who slept fifty-one years in 
a cave ; in Ricaut, of the seven devoted sleepers 
of Ephesus (the same, I presume, as the seven il- 
lustrious sleepers of Mohammed's tale in the Ko- 
ran) ; and of the Leucomorians, who fall asleep with 
the swallows early in November, and wake at the 
end of April. 

One moment more among the legends of ro- 
mance. In the " Hierarchie of the Blessed An- 
gels" it is written, that in a dark cavern of the 
Baltic there were discovered five men in Roman 
habits, so deeply sleeping that all efforts to awaken 
them were unavailing. 

Ogier the Dane is now sleeping in the dungeon 
of Cronenburg Castle (so recordeth the " Danske 
Folk Saga"). 

Prince Arthur, too, was lying, when a chronicle 
was written, in a trance at Avelon, and the Britons, 
with implicit belief, were watching for his awaking. 

Years have passed since these mysterious le- 
gends were penned, and I dare not say that the 
spells are broken yet. 

Ev. If they then slept, sweet Castaly, they are 
surely sleeping now. Tales lose nothing by telling, 
and nature is often thus magnified into a miracle. 
You may, however, believe this, that a periodical 
catalepsy, with intervals, may last even for years. 
The " Memoirs of the Academy of Berlin" record 
24 



370 SOMNOLENCE. TRANCE.— -CATALEPSY. 

the case of a woman who sunk into catalepsy 
twice a day for many years, during which period 
she was married, and became the almost uncon- 
scious mother of children. 

Nay, there is a story of Mynheer Vander Gucht, 
of Bremen, who, with very brief intermissions, slept 
and dreamed for thirty years ; so that, on the re- 
turn of travellers by sea or land, the primal ques- 
tion was, if Mr. Vander Gucht was up ! 

Ida. Catalepsy, I believe, has been often feigned; 
and, although it is astonishing with what apathy 
pain may be endured, the imposture, I presume, 
may be usually discovered by the proposition of 
some horrible remedy. 

< Ev. Frequently ; but many impostors have with- 
stood the test, and triumphed in their deception. 
Yet it is true that the perfect state of catalepsy has 
been, in very rare instances, voluntarily produced, 
thus exhibiting the complete influence of will over 
an involuntary muscle, the heart. 

The case of Colonel Townsend I adduce as one 
of undoubted authority. This officer was able to 
suspend the action both of his heart and lungs, af- 
ter which he became motionless, icy cold, and 
rigid, a glassy film overspreading his eyes. As 
there was no breathing, there was no vapour appa- 
rent on the glass when held to his mouth. During 
the many hours in which this voluntary trance ex- 
isted, there was a total absence of consciousness, 
yet a faculty of self-reanimation ! 

Avicenna speaks of one that could " cast himself 
into a palsie when he list ;" and Celsus, of a priest 
that could " separate himself from his senses when 
he list, and lie like a dead man, void of life and 
sense." Cardan, the P avian astrologer, brags of 
himself that he could do as much, and that " when 
he list." 



SOMNOLENCE. TRANCE. CATALEPSY. 371 

Dr. Cleghorn, of Glasgow, relates the case of a 
man who could stop the pulse at his wrist, and re- 
duce himself to the condition of syncope, by hit 
will, of course. 

Barton, the holy maid of Kent, was enabled thus 
to " absorb her faculties." 

Restitutus, a presbyter, could also throw himself 
into a trance, being insensible except to the very 
loudest sounds. So says Augustin. 

Astr. So that there may not be much imposture 
in the case, recorded in the " Spectator," of Nich- 
olas Hart, a professor of somnolency, who lived by 
sleeping. The following is his advertisement in the 
" Daily Courant" of that time : 

" Nicholas Hart, who slept last year in Saint 
Bartholomew's Hospital, intends to sleep this year 
at the ■ Cock and Bottle,' in Little Britain." 

I will freely confess to you, Evelyn, my skepti- 
cism as to these ultra romantic legends ; but may 
my own memory fail me not while I relate a few 
strange stories, and demand of yourself confirma- 
tion. 

Euphemia Lindsay, of Forfarshire, slept eight 
weeks, having taken nothing but (possibly) a little 
cold water. In the eighth week she died. 

Angelica Vlies, of Delft, had fasted in a state of 
insensibility from 1822 to 1828. She took nothing 
but water, tea, and whey, and these in the most 
minute quantities. 

In a record, A.D. 1545, I read that " William 
Foxley, a potmaker to the Mint in London, slept 
in the Tower of London (not being by any means 
to be waked; fourteen days and fifteen nights ; 
and when he waked, it seemed to him that the in- 
terval was but as one night." 

Samuel Clinton, of Timbury, near Bath, often 
slept for a month, and once from April to August. 



372 SOMNOLENCE. TRANCE. CATALEPSY. 

He would, during this period, suddenly wake, but, 
ere food could be administered to him, he lapsed 
again into a trance. 

Margaret Lyall, of Edinburgh, slept from the 
morning of June 27th to the evening of the 30th, 
then from July 1st to August 8th. Her breathing 
was scarcely perceptible, and her pulse low ; one 
arm was sensitive, the other senseless to the prick- 
ing of pins. She had never any subsequent cog- 
nizance of this sleep. 

A lady at Nismes had periodical attacks of 
trance, and it is curious that the intervals of waking 
were always of the same duration as the previous 
time of sleeping, however these might vary. 

In the year 1738, Elizabeth Orvin slept for four 
days, and, for the period of ten years afterward, 
passed seventeen hours of the twenty-four in sleep. 
No stimuli were powerful enough to rouse her ; 
acujiuncturation, flagellation, and even the stinging 
of bees, were ineffectual. Like many other somno- 
lents, she was morose and irritable, especially pre- 
vious to the sleeping fit. 

" Elizabeth Parker, of Morley Saint Peter, in 
Norfolk, for a considerable time was very regu- 
lar in her time of waking, which was once in 
seven days, after which they became irregular and 
precarious, and though of shorter duration, they 
were equally profound, and every attempt at keep- 
ing her awake, or waking her, was vain. Various 
experiments were tried, and an itinerant empiric, 
elated with the hope of rousing her from what he 
called counterfeit sleep, blew into her nostrils the 
powder of white hellebore ; but the poor creature 
remained insensible to the inhumanity of the deed, 
which, instead of producing the boasted effect, ex- 
coriated the skin of her nose, lips, and face." 
The records of medicine, I doubt not, may add 



SOMNOLENCE. TRANCE. CATALEPSY. 373 

a volume to these simple stories, and, perchance, 
may unfold to us something of the exciting causes 
which have induced these strange conditions ; yet 
they seem to me so various — in some the effect 
being so sudden, in others so gradual — that it were 
vain for me to conjecture. 

Ev. The influence of fear, and fright, and ex- 
treme joy will often produce instantaneous paral- 
ysis, while that of intense study or anxiety will 
steal on by degrees ; and then, while in some cases 
the senses will be entirely apathetic, in others they 
will be acutely excited. 

Mendelssohn almost every evening immediately 
fell into a trance whenever " philosophy" was even 
named in his presence ; and so acutely deranged 
was then his conception of sound, that a voice of 
stentorian force seemed to ring in his ears, repeat- 
ing to him any impressive conversation he had 
heard during the day. 

Without presuming to satisfy Astrophel in ex- 
plaining the full pathology of these curious cases, 
I may, by analogy, illustrate his question by allu- 
ding to the acute influence which impressions exert 
on the mind, and, through it, on the body. 

Captain D , on service in Ceylon, was or- 
dered to march to the Kandian territory. This dis- 
trict had been the grave of many officers who had 
resided in it. From this circumstance, and the an- 
ticipation of a similar fatality to himself, he became 
speecruess, and died in fifty hours. 

During the plague of Egypt, lots were drawn 
for a decision as to what surgeon should remain 
with the sick on the departure of the troops. Mr. 
Dick, the army inspector, relates that on one occa- 
sion the surgeon on whom the lot fell dropped dead. 

In the treaty with Meer Jaffier, Colonel Clive 
omitted the name of the Gentoo merchant, Omi- 
I i 



374 SOMNOLENCE. TRANCE. CATALEPSY. 

J chund. This man was induced to expect treasures 
to the amount of one million for his aid in deposing 
the Bengal nabob. From this disappointment he 
became speechless, and subsequently insane. 

George Grokatski, a Polish soldier, deserted. 
He was discovered a few days after, drinking and 
merry-making. On his court-martial he became 
speechless, unconscious, and fixed as a statue. For 
twenty days and nights he lay in this trance, with- 
out nourishment ; he then sunk and died. 

Some girls (as we read in Platerus) playing near 
a gibbet, one wantonly flung stones at the criminal 
suspended on it. Being violently struck, the body 
swung, and the girl, believing that it was alive, and 
was descending from the gibbet, fell into violent 
convulsions and died. 

The following case, although not fatal, very pow- 
erfully displays the paralyzing effects of imagi- 
nation. 

A lady in perfect health, twenty-three years of 
age, was asked by the parents of a friend to be 
present at a severe surgical operation. On consid- 
eration, it was thought wrong to expose her to such 
a scene, and the operation was postponed for a few 
hours. She went to bed, however, with the imagi- 
nation highly excited, and awoke in alarm, hearing, 
or thinking she heard, the shrieks of her friend un- 
der the agony of an operation. Convulsions and 
hysterics supervened, and, on their subsiding, she 
went into a profound sleep, which continued sixty- 
three hours. The most eminent of the faculty were 
then consulted, and she was cupped, which awoke 
her; but the convulsions returned, and she again 
went to sleep, and slept, with few intermissions, 
for a fortnight. The irregular periods continued 
for ten or twelve years, the length of the sleeping 
fits from thirty to forty hours. Then came on irri- 
- • ,- . « 

■ 




SOMNOLENCE. TRANCE. CATALEPSY. 375 

tability, and total want of sleep for three months, 
her usual time for sleeping being then forty-eight 
hours. 

But if the sudden transition be excess of joy, its 
effect may be equally melancholy. 

Wescloff was detained as a hostage by the Kal- 
mucs, and carried along with them in their memor- 
able flight to China. His widowed mother had 
mourned him dead, and, on his sudden return, the 
excess of joy. was instantaneously fatal. 

In the year 1544, the Jewish pirate, Sinamus 
Taffurus, was lying in a port of the Red Sea called 
Orsenoe, and was preparing for war, being then 
engaged in one with the Portuguese. While he 
was there he received the unexpected intelligence 
that his son (who in the siege of Tunis had been 
made prisoner by Barbarossa, and by him doomed 
to slavery) was suddenly ransomed, and coming to 
his aid with seven ships, well armed. He was im- 
mediately struck as if with apoplexy, and expired 
on the spot. 

A Swiss student, writes Zimmerman, yielded 
himself to intense metaphysical study, which grad- 
ually produced a complete trance of the senses, 
the functions of the body being not inactive. After 
the lapse of a year of apparent idiocy, each sense 
was successively excited by its proper stimulus ; 
the ear by loud sounds, &c. When these were 
restored, the mind was again perfect, although in 
this effort his strength was nearly exhausted. 

I may add that lunar influence, though it is now 
somewhat out of fashion, was formerly believed 
even by so sage a physician as Dr. Mead and others, 
and Astrophel will thank me for blending with his 
own examples the following case of catalepsy in a 
moonstruck maiden. At the full of the moon this 
damsel fell in a fit, the recurrence obeying the 






376 PREMATURE INTERMENT. 

regular periods of the tide. During the flood she 
lay in a speechless trance, and revived from it on 
the ebb. Her father was engaged on the Thames, 
and so struck was he with the regularity of these 
attacks, that on his return from the river he cor- 
rectly anticipated the condition of his daughter ; and 
even in the night he has arisen to his work, as her 
cries on recovering from the fit were always a cor- 
rect monitor to him of the turning of the tide. 



PREMATURE INTERMENT. — RESUSCI- 
TATION. 

" Oh sleep ! thou ape of death, lie dull upon her ; 
And be her sense but as a monument, 
Thus in a chapel lying." — Cymbeline. 
" Sleep may usurp on nature many hours." — Pericles. 

Ida. These stories are, indeed, painfully inter- 
esting ; but tell us, Evelyn, is it so certain that the 
shaft of Azrael had irretrievably struck these un- 
happy creatures of whom you speak 1 Is it not to 
be feared that instances of premature sepulture 
have too often occurred from want of scientific dis- 
cernment 1 On the exhumation of the Cimetiere 
des Innocens at Paris, during the Napoleon dynas- 
ty, the skeletons were, many of them, discovered in 
attitudes indicating a struggling to get free ; in 
deed some, we are assured, were partly out of their 
coffins. 

To avert this awful catastrophe, it was the cus- 
tom, in the provinces of Germany, to place a bell 
rope in the hand of a corpse for twenty-four hours 
before burial. "We may look on this, perhaps, as 
one natural source of romance and mystery, foi 
the ringing of bells by the dead has been a favour- 
ite omen of the ghostly legends. 

Ev. Alas ! even my own professional study and 



PREMATURE INTERMENT. 377 

duties have not been free from these melancholy- 
scenes ; and if I make not your gentle heart to 
tremble, fair Castaly, I will recount some of those 
unhappy instances of fatality to which the errors 
and neglect of man may doom his fellow-mortal. 

Miss C (of C Hall, in Warwickshire) 

and her brother were the subjects of typhoid fever. 
She seemed to die, and her bier was placed in the 
family vault. In a week her brother died also, and 
when he was taken to the tomb the lady was found 
sitting in her grave clothes on the steps of the vault, 
having, after her waking from the trance, died of 
terror or exhaustion. 

A girl, after repeated faintings, was apparently 
dead, and was taken, as a subject, into the anatom- 
ical theatre of the Salpetfiere" at Paris. During 
the night, faint groans were heard in the theatre, 
but no search was made. In the morning, it was 
evident that the girl had attempted to disengage her- 
self from the ivinding-sheet, one leg being thrust 
from off the tressels, and an arm resting on an ad- 
joining table. 

A slave girl of Canton, named Leaning, appa- 
rently died. She was placed in a coffin, the lid of 
which remained unfastened, that her parents might 
come and see the corpse. Three days after the ap- 
parent death, while the remains were being con- 
veyed to the grave, a noise or voice was heard pro- 
ceeding from the coffin, and on removing the cov- 
ering, it was found the woman had come to life 
again. 

In 1838, at Tonnieus, in the Lower Garonne, as 
the graveman threw earth on a coffin, he also heard 
groans. Much terrified, he ran away, and a crowd 
assembled. On opening the coffin, the face of the 
buried man was distorted, and he had disengaged 
his arms from the folds of his winding-sheet. 
Ii2 



378 PREMATURE INTERMENT. 

The Emperor Zeno was, as it is written, prema- 
turely buried ; and, when the body was soon after 
casually discovered, it was found that he had, to 
satisfy acute hunger, eaten some flesh from his arm. 

Astr. One might think that Master Ainsworth, 
from this record, sketched the episode of the sex- 
ton and the old coffin in his " Rookwood." The 
truth is equal to the fiction. 

Cast. When I was at Breslau in 1835 (and this 
is not one of Astrophel's fictions), a nun of the Ur- 
suline Convent was placed in her coffin in the 
church. At midnight, the sisters assembled to 
chant the vigils over the body of their sainted sis- 
ter. While the holy hymn was echoing through 
the oratory, the nun arose, tottered to the altar, 
knelt before the cross, and prayed. The sisters, 
with a cry of horror, awoke the abbess ; and on her 
arrival, the nun again arose, and lay down in her 
coffin. The physician of the convent was speedily 
summoned, but, on his arrival, he found her dead. 

There can scarcely be drawn a scene combining 
the sublime and beautiful of romance in higher in- 
tensity than this. It was the spectral visitation of 
a seraph. 

Ida. Like many sublimities of nature, these mys- 
teries have been profaned by unholy imitation, as, 
for instance, the reanimation of the nuns in the 
opera of " Robert le Diable." But there is an aw- 
ful romance mingled with the history of those mel- 
ancholy creatures, from whose inanimate clay the 
immortal spirit was thought to have parted, still 
more impressive. That instinctive, that inexpressi- 
ble dread with which we contemplate a corpse, is 
nothing in comparison with that thrill of astonish- 
ment which overwhelms us when a body becomes 
(as in the miraculous recall of Lazarus) reanima- 
ted — when a spirit appears to visit us from the dead. 



PREMATURE INTERMENT. 379 

Yet this is not fear, for we know it cannot injure 
us ; it is a feeling that we are with something be- 
yond ourselves spiritual, which had seemed to have 
endured a transfiguration, and been admitted into 
the order of angelic beings. There must be some- 
thing of the supernatural which creates this fearful 
wonder, an impression on the heart that is an es- 
pecial influence of the Deity : else should we not 
behold with dread, instead of a sacred pleasure, the 
success of our efforts in cases of suspended anima- 
tion ] 

This visitation from another world is one of the 
surest indications of our spirituality ; and, like the 
reanimation of soul, and mind, and consciousness, 
from deep and undreaming sleep, lighting up the 
body into brilliancy and beauty, might drown a 
skeptic's reasoning in a flood of holy faith, and 
overwhelm him with the belief of immortality. 

Cast. It is this combination of vitality and death, 
so seemingly a paradox, that forms the basis of 
many of our deepest romances ; as the " Spectre 
Life in Death," in the Ancient Mariner of the mel- 
ancholy Coleridge, himself a wild visionary of the 
first order. If I remember, he is writing of a spec- 
tre ship 

" Betwixt us and the sun. 
And straight the sun was fleck'd with bars 

(Heaven's mother send us grace !) 
As if through a dungeon grate he peer'd 

With broad and burning face. 
Alas ! (thought I, and my heart beat loud) 

How fast she nears and nears. 
Are those her sails that glance in the sun, 

Like restless gossameres i 
Are those her ribs, through which the sun 

Doth peer, as through a grate '*. 
And is that woman all her crew ? 
Is that a Death— and are there two ? 

Is Death that woman's mate ? 
Her lips were red, her looks were free, 
Her locks were yellow as gold, 



380 RESUSCITATION. 

Her skin was white as leprosy, 
The nightmare Life in Death was she, 
Who thicks man's blood with cold." 

Ev. It is melancholy that a noble mind should be 
so perverted by poppy-juice. And yet the Mo- 
hammedan beats him hollow at this sort of bur- 
lesque. 

There is a fiction in Sale's notes to the " Koran*' ' 
During the building of his magnificent temple, 
King Solomon sleeps in death. He remains sup- 
ported by his staff, on which he had been leaning, 
until a worm eats away the prop, and the body falls 
prostrate to the ground. 

But we need not go to the East for our speci- 
mens. Even in the year 1839, in our Emerald 
Isle of superstition, they would have us believe a 
miracle of this kind. 

In a field near Lurgan, a man called Farland 
had received money from a widow wherewith to 
pay her rent ; this he failed to do. On her remon- 
strance and declaration, she was asked to name her 
witnesses. She answered, " No one but God and 
herself." " Then," rejoined the man, " your God 
was asleep at the time." The attestation of three 
witnesses records that he was instantly struck in a 
trance as he w T as resting on his spade, and in that 
attitude he had ever since continued ! 

Cast. And is it not a blot on the page of sci- 
ence that so many ill-fated creatures are thus, 
through an error, doomed to dissolution ] Say, 
gentle Evelyn, has not your philosophy discovered 
some mode of discernment between life and death, 
which would smile the philanthropist on to patient 
watching ] 

Ev. To a degree. But it were vain to offer here 
precepts for such discrimination, which, sooth to 
say, are not yet absolute. The rosy tint of com- 
plexion may remain for some time, and even per- 



RESUSCITATION. 381 

spiration may break forth, after deatli ; or the body- 
may assume the most deathlike aspect, and yet vital- 
ity is only in abeyance. Among our recoveries, it 
is true, there are many spontaneous rousings, and 
this especially if deep impression has been the 
cause of trance. 

Listen to the following from a journal of 1834 : 
" The wife of Thomas Benson, livery-lace maker, 
of Great Queen-street, Lincoln's Inn Fields, being 
suddenly taken ill, to all appearance expired ; and, 
when every symptom of life had fled, the body was 
duly laid out. On the following night, between 
nine and ten o'clock, while the undertaker was in 
the house receiving instructions for the funeral, to 
the astonishment and terror of the whole family, 
Mrs. Benson came down stairs, having been in a 
trance nearly thirty hours. Her situation has so 
terribly shocked her that but faint hopes are en- 
tertained of her recovery." 

It is melancholy to know how often these cases 
are abandoned to nature; but science may do 
much, and should do more to relieve them, al- 
though we possess not the wondrous vial of Rena- 
tus, nor have developed the creative mysteries of 
Prometheus or Frankenstein. 

Yet the recovery of Francois de Civille was al- 
most as great a wonder. He was thrown, at the 
siege of Rouen, into insensibility. He was in this 
state carried home by his servant. During a week 
he became warm, but exhibited no other sign of 
life. He was at this period flung out of a win- 
dow by the besiegers, and cast upon a dunghill, 
where he lay naked for three or four days. Yet 
even after this he was restored to life. 

Astr. You confess the wonder, Evelyn, that is 
some concession ; you may, perchance, believe an- 
other of equal interest. 

" My mother being sick to death of a fever three 



382 RESUSCITATION. 

months after I was born, which was the occasion 
she nursed me no longer, her friends and servants 
thought, to all outward appearance, she was dead, 
and so almost two days and a night; but Dr. Win- 
ston coming to comfort my father, went into my 
mother's room, and, looking earnestly in her face, 
said, ' She is so handsome, and looks so lovely, I 
cannot think she is dead ;' and suddenly took a 
lancet out of his pocket, and with it cut the sole of 
her foot, which bled. Upon this he immediately 
caused her to be laid upon the bed again, and to 
be rubbed, and such means, as she came to life, 
and opening her eyes, saw two of her kinswomen 
stand by her, my Lady Knolleys and my Lady 
Russell, both with great wide sleeves, as the fash- 
ion then was, and said, ' Did not you promise me 
fifteen years, and are you come again V which 
they not understanding, persuaded her to keep her 
spirits quiet in that great weakness wherein she 
then was ; but some hours after she desired my fa- 
ther and Dr. Howlsworth might be left alone with 
her, to whom she said, ' I will acquaint you that 
during the time of my trance I was in great quiet, 
but in a place I could neither distinguish nor de- 
scribe ; but the sense of leaving my girl, who is 
dearer to me than all my children, remained a 
trouble upon my spirits. Suddenly I saw two by 
me clothed in long white garments, and methought 
I fell down upon my face upon the dust, and they 
asked me why I was so troubled in so great hap- 
piness. I replied, O let me have the same grant 
given to Hezekiah, that I may live fifteen years to 
see my daughter a woman ; to which they answer- 
ed, It is done, and then at that instant I awoke out 
of my trance.' And Dr. Howlsworth did then af- 
firm that that day she died made just fifteen years 
from that time." 

I remember a story of the effect of deep impres- 



RESUSCITATION. 383 

eion on a sensitive mind : the sleep of a lovesick 
Juliet, without the entrancing draught of the friar. 
A young French lady in the Rue St. Honore, at 
Paris, was condemned by her father to a hated 
marriage while her heart was devoted to another. 
She fell into a trance, and was buried. Under some 
strange influence, her lover opened her grave, and 
she was revived, and married. Thus the romance 
of the " Beauty of Verona" was acted without its 
tragedy. 

I have heard, but where I recollect not, a story 
of another French lady, who was actually the sub- 
ject of an anatomist. On the evidence of some 
faint signs of vitality, he not only restored the lady 
to life, but united himself to her in marriage. 

There is no doubt, also, that Rachel, lady Rus- 
sell, would have been buried alive had not the de- 
voted aifection of her husband, and his constant 
visits to her coffin, prevented it. 

I read, too, that Shorigny, an hysterical girl in 
Paris, was watched daily by her physician, after he 
was assured by the friends that she was dead. On 
the sixth day the cloth covering was seen to move, 
the eyes soon after opened, and she gradually re- 
covered. 

Ev. It is one of the anomalies of our science 
that similar causes will often produce opposite ef- 
fects. We may be thrown into trance by fright, 
and intense alarm may be the cause of recovery. 
I may relate an Oriental anecdote as an analogy, 
which, however, I beg you to receive with some 
reservation. 

A Persian, at the siege of Sardis, was about to 
kill Croesus, whom he did not recognise. By his 
side was the king's dumb child, who, in a sudden 
paroxysm of agony, screamed out, " Kill not Croe- 
sus !" From this instant (as it were a miracle), 
Herodotus writes, his speech was fully restored ! 



384 RESUSCITATION. 

We learn from Bourgeois, in 1838, that a med- 
ical man, from the sudden influence of grief, sunk 
into a cataleptic state, but his consciousness never 
left him. The lamentations of his wife, the sym- 
pathetic condolence of his medical friends, and the 
arrangements regarding his funeral, were to him 
distinctly audible. He knew that he was in his 
coflin, and that there was a solemn procession fol- 
lowing him to the grave. As the solemn words of 
" Earth to earth" were uttered, and the dust fell 
on his coffin lid, the consciousness of this, and his 
horror at his impending fate, burst the fetters of 
his icy trance — he shrieked aloud, and was saved. 

In the " Psychological Magazine" we read of a 
lady who fell into a state of catalepsy after a vio- 
lent nervous disorder. 

" It seemed to her, as if in a dream, that she 
was really dead ; yet she was perfectly conscious 
of all that happened around her in this dreadful 
state. She distinctly heard her friends speaking 
and lamenting her death at the side of her coffin ; 
she felt them pull on her dead clothes, and lay her 
in it. This feeling produced a mental anxiety 
which was indescribable. She tried to cry, but 
her soul was without power, and could not act on 
her body. She had the contradictory feeling as 
if she were in her own body and yet not in it at 
one and the same time. It was equally impossible 
for her to stretch out her arm or to open her eyes 
as to cry, although she continually endeavoured to 
do so. The internal anguish of her mind was, 
however, at its utmost height when the funeral 
hymns were sung, and when the lid of the coffin 
was about to be nailed on. The thought that she 
was to be buried alive was the first one which gave 
activity to her soul, and caused it to operate on 
her corporeal frame." 



RESUSCITATION. 385 

I have been assured that the soldier who has 
been placed in his grave by such an error has been 
awoke in his coffin by the volley fired over him. 

Parallel with these are the instances in which 
vitality seemed to be instantly excited by acute 
pain. 

I remember the case of a cataleptic girl, related 
by the Abbe Menon, who was doomed to dissec- 
tion ; the first stroke of the scalpel awoke her, and 
she lived. 

Cardinal Sommaglia was not so fortunate. He 
fell into syncope from intense grief, and it was de- 
cided that he should be opened and embalmed. 
As the surgeon's knife punctured the lungs, the 
heart throbbed, and the cardinal attempted to avert 
the knife with his hand ; but the die was cast, and 
he shortly died. 

The Abbe Prevost was also sacrificed in this way. 

As Vesalius, the physician of Philip II., was 
opening the thorax of a Spanish gentleman, the 
heart palpitated. Death also occurred here. Ve- 
salius was brought before the Inquisition, but was 
pardoned. 

A gentleman was seized, apparently with apo- 
plexy, while at cards. A vein was opened in both 
arms, but no blood flowed. He was placed in a 
room with two watchers, who slept, alas ! too long; 
for in the morning the room was deluged with 
blood from the punctures, and his life was gone. 

These are, indeed, unhappy instances of the er- 
rors of omission and commission entailed on the 
fallibility of science. I believe a French author, 
Bruhier, has collected fifty-two cases of persons 
buried alive, four which were dissected prema- 
turely, fifty-three which recovered, and seventy- 
two which were falsely reported dead. 

Astr. Ther^ is a solemn problem associated 
25 K r 



386 RESUSCITATION. 

with this, on which I have often reflected, the so- 
lution of which, I presume, your philosophy can- 
not offer to us. At what moment would the mind 
cease to influence the body, were there no recov- 
ery from the trance ] I have sometimes felt a mys- 
terious influence, apart, I am sure, from philoso- 
phy, that whispered me, the life, which I had 
watched in its ebb, was at length gone. Yet of 
the transit of an immaterial spirit, although convin- 
ced of the sublime truth, it is certain we know no- 
thing. 

Ev. Nothing demonstrative. It is not, however, 
when the body seems dead, for consciousness, or the 
systemic life, may for a while be suspended by mere 
cold. But dissolution is that point, unknown to us, 
when the principle of life (whether that be the in- 
fluence of arterial blood, or electricity, magnetism, 
or galvanism) is not excitable, when molecular death 
has ensued ; not even irritability, that vis insita or 
vis nervosa of Haller, remaining. Of course, mind 
must instantly depart on the commencement of de- 
composition, the brain being then totally incompat- 
ible with mind. The Stoics believed the soul to 
occupy the body until it was putrefied, and resolved 
into its materia prima. 

Astr. I once thought, Evelyn, that the difference 
in the tenacity of life in the man and the zoophyte 
might, with some subtlety, be explained on this prin- 
ciple, thus : that the life of a reasoning creature was 
in its soul; that of an inferior animal in its spinal ir- 
ritability. Thus, when man is decapitated, his soul 
is gone from him — he is dead ; but when vitality is 
in the vis nervea, as in the insect, life may exist with- 
out a head, that is, the organ of a soul. The but- 
terfly will flutter, I am told, long after decapitation. 

Ev. The excito-motory principle illustrates this 
fact, without the requisition of such a notion ; and 



RESUSCITATION. 387 

life, we know, may be artificially sustained for a 
time after decapitation. The interesting physiolo- 
gy of the reflex actions of a nerve explains this, and 
all the terrific convulsions of galvanized bodies. 

Cast. I think I have a glimpse of your mean- 
ing, Evelyn. May we not believe, then, that there 
is truth in the affirmation that Charlotte Corday's 
cheeks blushed at her exposure after her decolla- 
tion ] 

Ev. There is far more romance than truth, fair 
Castaly, in this story; but I do believe the proba- 
bility of a story almost as marvellous, that the lips 
of Mary Stuart frayed visibly after her head fell 
from her body. Soemmering has written, that if 
the open eyes of a decollated head be turned full on 
the sun, the lids will immediately close, but this, of 
course, without consciousness. 

Cast. And yet some learned men believed the 
head of Charlotte Corday sensible of its state, from 
this asserted fact of its blushing. 

Ev. They should not have been believed with- 
out complete evidence. Indeed, this question may 
now be deemed decided in the negative by the ex- 
periments of a learned professor of Heidelburg on 
the head of Sebastian Zink, decollated at Rastadt. 
On placing bitters on the tongue, and hallooing 
"pardon" in his ear at the instant ef decapitation, 
it was proved that there was an utter insensibility 
to all. 

Ida. Then sensation is instantly destroyed. In 
this, as in all his dispensations, how is the mercy 
of the Deity displayed ! 

Ev. It is still a question with us whether our 
physical sensations, on the point of dissolution, are 
often so acute as they appear. 

Cabanis and the famous Guillotine declared their 
conviction that no pain was felt at the moment of 



388 RESUSCITATION. 

or after decapitation. In the works of Lord Bacon, 
we read of one who was suspended till he was all 
but dead, and his declaration was that his suffer- 
ing was a mere trifle. Cowper also left a manu- 
script, in which he states that, in one of his three 
attempts at suicide, he hung himself over his door 
in the Temple, but that he did not suffer in the least. 

Ida. And in drowning % 

Ev. While the medical committee of the Hu- 
mane Society were framing those scientific rules 
which have rendered the process of resuscitation 
so successful, I remember, especially, one pale and 
melancholy girl, who glided in before us like a 
spectre. She had attempted suicide, but her inten- 
tion was happily thwarted, after she had been for 
many minutes in the water, and was apparently 
lifeless. 

True, the mental agony which prompts to such 
an act will often overwhelm sensation; but this 
creature was conscious of her act, and assured us 
that the sensation of drowning was but an intense 
feeling offaintness preceding a sinking into insensi- 
bility, with a short spasmodic struggle ; an uneasi- 
ness rather than a pain. When Clarence therefore, 
recounting his dream, exclaims, 

" My God, methought what "pain it was to drown !" 
I believe he should rather have referred his feel- 
ings to his recovery,!? the words of the pale girl were 
true; for, when consciousness and sensation are 
returning, the feeling is intense. Throughout the 
body, as it is recovering from apathetic numbness, 
the sense of returning circulation of the blood is 
terrible : an acute sensation of pins and needles in 
the brain and the marrow of the spine. No won- 
der, then, that these resuscitated beings will request 
that no efforts may be made should they again be 
in a state of suspended animation. The sensation 



RESUSCITATION. 389 

on being born is probably as acute as that on dis- 
solution. 

Ida. Then there is consciousness 1 

Ev. The evidence of Dr. Adam Clarke will il- 
lustrate this interesting question. Yet I differ some- 
what with him regarding so perfect a conscious- 
ness during submersion. In his life, you will see 
the following dialogue with Dr. Lettsom, in which 
Clarke describes his own case of immersion : 

" Dr. Lettsom said, ' Of all that I have seen re- 
stored, or questioned afterward, I never found one 
who had the smallest recollection of anything that 
passed, from the moment they went under water 
till the time in which they were restored to life 
and thought.' Dr. Clarke answered Dr. L. : ' I 
knew a case to the contrary.' ' Did you, indeed V 
1 Yes, Dr. L., and the case was my own. I was 
once drowned.' And then he related the circum- 
stances, and added, ' I saw my danger, but thought 
the mare would swim, and I knew I could ride 
when we were overwhelmed. It appeared to me 
that I had gone to the bottom with my eyes open. 
At first I thought 1 saw the bottom clearly, and 
then felt neither apprehension nor pain ; on the 
contrary, I felt as if I had been in the most de- 
lightful situation ; my mind was tranquil and un- 
commonly happy. I felt as if in Paradise, and yet 
I do not recollect that I saw any person. The im- 
pressions of happiness seemed not to be derived 
from anything around me, but from the state of 
my mind ; and yet I had a general apprehension 
of pleasing objects ; and I cannot recollect that 
anything appeared defined, nor did my eye take 
in any object, only I had a general impression of a 
green colour, as of fields or gardens. But my hap- 
piness did not arise from these, but appeared to con- 
sist merely in the tranquil, indescribably tranquil 
Kk2 



390 RESUSCITATION. 

state of my mind. By-and-by I seemed to awake 
as out of a slumber, and felt unutterable pain and 
difficulty in breathing ; and now I found I had been 
carried by a strong wave, and left in very shallow 
water upon the shore, and the pain I felt was oc- 
casioned by the air once more inflating my lungs 
and producing respiration. How long I had been 
under water I cannot tell ; it may, however, be 
guessed at by this circumstance : when restored to 
the power of reflection, I looked for the mare, and 
saw her walking leisurely down shore towards 
home, then about half a mile distant from the place 
where we were submerged. Now I aver, 1st. 
That, in being drowned, I felt no pain. 2d. That 
I did not, for a simple moment, lose my conscious- 
ness. 3d. I felt indescribably happy, and, though 
dead as to the total suspension of all the functions 
of life, yet I felt no pain in dying ; and I take for 
granted, from this circumstance, those who die by 
drowning feel no pain, and that, probably, it is the 
easiest of all deaths. 4th. That I felt no pain till 
once more exposed to the action of the atmospheric 
air, and then I felt great pain and anguish in re- 
turning to life, which anguish, had I continued 
under water, I should have never felt. 5th. That 
animation must have been totally suspended from 
the time I must have been under water, which time 
might be, in some measure, ascertained by the dis- 
tance the mare was from the place of my submer- 
sion, which was at least half a mile, and she was 
not, when I first observed her, making any speed. 
6th. Whether there was anything preternatural in 
my escape, I cannot tell ; or whether a ground- 
swell had not, in a merely natural way, borne me 
to the shore, and the retrocession of the tide (for 
it was then ebbing) left me exposed to the open 
air, I cannot tell. My preservation must have been 



TRANSMIGRATION. 391 

die effect of natural causes, and yet it appears to be 
more rational to attribute it to a superior agency. 
Here, then, Dr. L., is a case widely different, it 
appears, from those you have witnessed, and which 
argues very little for the modish doctrine of the 
materiality of the soul.' Dr. Lettsom appeared 
puzzled with this relation, but did not attempt to 
make any remarks on it." 

And well he might, for if animation were totally 
suspended, consciousness would have been suspend- 
ed also. 



TRANSMIGRATION.— ANALYSIS OF 
TRANCE. 

" Thou shalt hold the opinion of PylYiagoras ere I will allow 
of thy wits, and fear to kill a woodcock lest thou dispossess the 
soul of thy grandam." — Twelfth Night. 

" Through all thy veins shall run 
A cold and drowsy humour, which shall seize 
Each vital spirit." — Romeo and Juliet. 

Astr. You have granted me more than you de- 
sire, dear Evelyn. If life be restored, it had never 
deserted the body, and yet the mind Jiad deserted it. 

The mind and body, then, are both independent 
of each other. From this truth a metaphysical ques- 
tion of deep and wondrous interest arises : In what 
condition does the mind exist, during so long a period^ 
uninfluencing and uninfluenced by the power of per- 
ception ? I remember searching for some elucidation 
of this mystery among those ghost-stories of the 
Hebrews, founded on the " purgatorie of souls," 
in Stehelin's " Traditions of the Jews," but I rose 
from my reading unenlightened. 

Ida. And ever will, Astrophel. Profane curi- 
osity must fail in such a study ; adoration alone 
can sanctify this mystic question, on which theolo- 



392 TRANSMIGRATION. 

gians and philosophers, even those devoutly confi- 
dent in the sublime truths of immortality, have so 
essentially differed. 

Like Astrophel, Paley inquires where is the soul 
during suspended vitality 1 and Priestley, where 
when the body was created] Hume, with the 
subtlety of the skeptic, asks how can the soul long 
be the same, seeing that, like the body, its parti- 
cles are constantly changing ] While Glanville 
thinks himself a wondrous wight as he prates of 
its " essential spissitude, a something that is more 
subtle than the body, contracting itself into a less 
ubi" 

Were this sublime secret fathomable by the 
deepest intellect, then would be unfolded things 
above, which are ordained to be ever mysteries to 
creatures on earth, such as the future existence of 
the spirit, and the nature of Paradise. 

Although revelation has given us glimpses enough 
to satisfy humble devotion, what mind can decide 
on the exact nature and changes of its own future 
state 1 The negative answer is at once returned 
by the variety of these learned opinions : That the 
soul is, immediately after death, submitted to its 
reward or punishment. That its state after death 
is one of half happiness and misery, until it be 
again joined to its body on the resurrection, and 
then it shall enjoy or suffer the extremes of felicity 
or torment. That the soul rests in quiet uncon- 
sciousness until the day of judgment. And, lastly, 
that souls are purified by purgatory and compara- 
tive suffering, and then are admitted into the realms 
of perpetual enjoyment. 

Astr. Is it not strange that in this notion of pur- 
gatory, with slight variations, pagans, and Roman- 
ists, and Egyptians, and Brahmins so nearly ac- 
cord ] In the creed of the Brahmins there is 



TRANSMIGRATION. 393 

something of sublimity, whatever may be their er- 
ror, and Ida will not chide if I repeat the essence 
of their creed, which Robertson has gathered from 
the " Baghvat Geeta." 

" Every intelligent nature, particularly the souls 
of men, they conceived to be portions separated 
from this great spirit ; to which, after fulfilling their 
destiny on earth, and attaining a proper degree of 
purity, they would be again reunited. In order to 
efface the stains with which a soul, during its res- 
idence on earth, has been defiled by the indulgence 
of sensual and corrupt appetites, they taught that 
it must pass, in a long succession of transmigra- 
tions, through the bodies of different animals, until, 
by what it suffers and what it leaves in the various 
forms of its existence, it shall be so thoroughly re- 
fined from all pollution as to be rendered meet for 
being absorbed into the divine essence, and re- 
turns, like a drop, into that unbounded ocean from 
which it originally issued." 

Aristotle, in taking up this notion of transmigra- 
tion in his book " De Anima," says that " the soul 
was always joined to a body, sometimes to one, 
sometimes to another." And from this idea were 
taken the stories of Fadlallah and the Dervis, in 
the " Spectator," of the " Transmigrations of In- 
dus," and the beautiful fable of " Psyche," or the 
soul, which, when a body died, could not live alone 
on earth, and so crept into another. Herodotus, in 
the second book of his history, has some allusions 
to the Egyptian creed ; and, indeed, the fear of this 
transmigration was the origin of mummies among 
the Copts. Their belief that the soul (the immor- 
tality of which they very early, if not the first, de- 
cided) could not leave the body when entire, in- 
duced them to preserve that body as long as possi- 
ble ; and the mummy unrollers and hieroglyphic 






394 TRANSMIGRATION. 

readers must commit sad sacrilege by exposing 
their sacred dust to the decomposition of air. 

When the body was diss-olved, however, the soul 
entered that of some animal that instant born ; and 
profane commentators have, on this creed, presu- 
med to explain the sacred story of the " banish- 
ment and savage life of Nebuchadnezzar." At the 
end of 30,000 years it again entered that of a man ; 
and it is likely that their object in embalming was 
to have the soul re-enter the same body from choice 
and habit. 

Simonides, four hundred years after the siege 
of Troy, ungallantly reversed this doctrine, deci- 
ding that " the souls of women were formed of the 
principles and elements of brutes." The Pythago- 
rean system was, if not more courteous, at least 
more just. 

" Thus all things are but altered, nothing dies ; 
And here and there th' imbodied spirit flies. 
By time, or force, or sickness, dispossess'd, 
And lodges, where it lights, in bird or beast ; 
Or hunts without, till ready limbs it find, 
And actuates those according to their kind. 
From tenement to tenement is toss'd, 
The soul is still the same, the figure only lost." 

This is from Dryden's translation of Chaucer. 

And Burton's record is as follows : 

" The Pythagoreans defend Metempsychosis and 
Palingenesia, that souls go from one body to an- 
other, epota prius Lethes nudd, as men into wolves, 
beares, dogs, hogs, as they were inclined in their 
lives, or participated in conditions : 

' inque ferinas 
Possumus ire domus pecudumque in corpora condi.' 

" Lucian's cock was first Euphorbus, a captaine : 

' Ille ego (nam memini) Trojani tempore belli 
Panthoides Euphorbus eram? " 

And Plato, in Timaeus and in Phaedo — 

Ev. Enough of Plato, dear Astrophel ; or be- 



TRANSMIGRATION. 395 

lieve, with me, that his philosophy on this point 
was merely figurative of the similarity of mind, or 
genius, or feature, between the dead and the living ; 
as it was said of old, that the soul of Raphael had 
transmigrated to the body of Francesco Mazzola 
(Parmegiano), becausehis style and personal beauty 
so closely resembled those of the all but divine 
master of his art. 

And pray what was the gist of that special as- 
tronomer, who affirmed that he "saw something 
written in the moon V A wild romance only ! No, 
forsooth. Pythagoras may classically vociferate 

" errat, et illinc, 
Hue venit, hinc illuc, et quoslibet occupat artus 
Spiritus : eque feris humana in corpora transit, 
Inque feras noster." 

But read farther, and you will find the high moral 
to be a severe injunction against flesh-eating : 

" Then let not piety be put to flight, 
To please the taste of glutton appetite ; 
But suffer innate souls secure to dwell, 
Lest from their seats your parents you expel ; 
With rabid hunger feed upon your kind, 
Or from a beast dislodge a brother's mind." 

Think you this injunction will be obeyed, in the 
face of the "Almanac des Gourmands'?" 

Ida. Evelyn is severe. May 1 tell him that 
among the records of the East he will find inci- 
dents blended with this idea which may almost 
consecrate the creed of a Pagan ] As the honey is 
hung close to the poisoned sting of the bee, there 
may be a bright spot to illuminate the gloomy an- 
nals of superstition. The very belief in transmi- 
gration may impart an atom of mercy, even to an 
infidel ; and where superstition, shorn of the light 
of Christianity, must prevail, it were better sure to 
foster that notion which may, even in one little sen- 
timent, half humanize the heart. 



396 TRANSMIGRATION. 

Listen to this contrast between some Orient sects, 
along the eastern shores of Hindostan. The daugh- 
ters of Guzzerat fold their infants to their bosoms 
drugged with opium ; and when the babe is thus 
poisoned, the Hindoo girl will answer with a lan- 
guid and seeming innocent smile, "It is not diffi- 
cult to blast a flower-bud." 

Then the Kurrada Brahmins (as we read in the 
" Rudhiradhyaya"), believing themselves the agents 
of Vishara Boot, the spirit of poison, sacrifice the 
pundits to their vampyre goddess, Maha-Lackshmi. 

Equally blind, yet more happy in the nature of 
their superstition, are the Shravuch Banians, or the 
proselytes of Jena. The Yati, or officiating priest of 
this order, in purifying the temples, sweeps the floor 
with the Raju-hurrun, a broom of cotton-threads, 
lest hapless one little insect may be destroyed. 
And this we may believe, from the creed of trans- 
migration being influential among these people. 
Sir Paul Rycaut, also, in his Oriental history, in- 
forms us of parallel incidents among the devout 
Mohammedans, who, believing that in the body of 
a brute may reside the soul of a departed relative, 
ransom with their gold many a bird that would 
otherwise flutter away its captivity in a cage. 

Cast. I will not flout your praises, Ida; but in 
our own island, this illusion has rather led to cap- 
tivity. I remember the story of a lady living in 
Worcestershire, who, under the innocent delusion 
that her daughters were changed into singing-birds, 
hung her pew in the Cathedral with cages of gold- 
finches and linnets. And Lord Orford, in his 
" Reminiscences," thus records the monomania of 
the Duchess of Kendal : 

"Ina tender mood, he (King George) promised 
the duchess that if she survived him, and it were 
possible for the departed to return to this world, 



ANALYSIS OF TRANCE AND ITS SYNONYMES. 397 

he would make her a visit. The duchess, on his 
death, so much expected the accomplishment of that 
engagement, that a large raven, or some black fowl, 
flying into one of the windows of her villa at Isle- 
worth, she was persuaded it was the soul of her 
departed monarch so accoutred, and received and 
treated it with all the respect and tenderness of 
duty, till the royal bird, or she, took the last flight." 

Astr. You spoke of the absolute senselessness 
of trance, and yet there were some hints of the 
awakening power of fear. Is this consistent 1 

Ev. I expected your objection. In the cases of 
perfect catalepsy, the brain is not conscious of its 
mind, or if the mind be active, there is no assu- 
rance of its activity. But, as its faculties are awa- 
kened, it usually begins to work exactly where it 
left off; one of the most imposing proofs, both of 
a separate existence during life, and of our bodies' 
unconsciousness of this transient disunion. 

Astr. I may own, Evelyn, that your illustrations 
of our questions, in despite of some straining at 
explanation, carry, on many points, conviction to 
my own mind, but not on all. There is another 
question equally interesting with the former .• How 
is vitality preserved during this protracted absti- 
nence 1 

Ev. Remember, dear Astrophel, my confession, 
that there are inexplicable mysteries. But to the 
point of your last question. We are aware of the 
long period during which the body may fast after 
shipwreck, or beneath a fallen cliff, or even on the 
incarceration of animals for the purpose of exper- 
iment. Thus Captain Bligh, and seventeen per- 
sons, sailed four thousand miles in an open boat, 
with a small bird occasionally for the food of all, 
The Juno's crew, wrecked off Aracan, existed 
twenty-three days without food ; and the wreck of 

L T. 



398 ANALYSIS OF TRANCE AND ITS SYNONYMES. 

the Medusa is fresh in our memories. Here the 
body feeds on its own fat, shrinking until that sup- 
ply is lost, and then it dies. 

I might relate to you the very impressive stories 
of Anne Moore, of Tutbury ; of Janet M'Cleod, 
told by Dr. Mackenzie ; and many strange facts 
related by Dr. Willan, Sir William Hamilton, and 
others. 

I might refer you to legends, of which I can 
scarcely press for your belief, as the strange but 
authenticated story of Anna Garbero, of Racconig- 
gi, forty miles from Turin, who existed without 
nutrition for two years, becoming like a shrivelled 
mummy ; and that of Eve Hergen, who existed 
thirteen years upon the odour of flowers ! But 
even with that incredulous frown of Astrophel's, 
and that faint smile of thine, fair Castaly, let me 
at once to my explanations. 

In natural sleep the functions of the body are 
impeded. One of these is digestion. As there is 
little waste of the system there is little necessity 
for repletion, and life can be supported by a very 
slight action of the heart, a minute current of blood; 
like the slender vitality of infants, who, even in a 
state of health, seem frequently scarcely to breathe. 
The circulation is materially influenced in sleep, 
the pulse being slower and more feeble than du- 
ring waking ; the relaxation of the cutaneous ves- 
sels inducing frequent perspiration, especially in 
debilitated systems, and in the last stages of ady- 
namic fevers. 

The body of the cataleptic patient descends to 
the condition of less complex animal life, in which 
there appears a much greater simplicity of organ- 
ization ; and we well know, as we descend in the 
scale of creation, towards the cold-blooded single- 
hearted animals, and especially if we reach the zoo- 



ANALYSIS OF TRANCE AND ITS SYNONYMES. 399 

pliyte, in how exact a proportion to this simplici- 
ty of structure is the tenacity of life increased. 
" Fish," says Sir John Franklin, " were taken out 
of the nets frozen, and became a solid mass of ice, 
being by a blow of a hatchet easily split open ; 
they, however, recovered their vitality on being 
thawed." 

A course of' systematic abstinence will enable 
us, if we wished it, to endure extreme privations, 
which a high feeder would soon sink under ; and 
this is probably the discipline adopted by the fa- 
kirs of India, who fast so long under the influence 
of superstitious devotion. 

Vaillant's spider lived without food nearly one 
year ; John Hunter's toad fourteen months ; land 
tortoises eighteen months ; a beetle three years ; 
and two serpents, according to Shaw, five years ; 
an antelope has survived twenty days without 
food ; some dogs forty days ; an eagle twenty-three 
days. 

Now all animals fall asleep at certain tempera- 
tures, which they cannot resist, but the common 
effect of extreme cold is death. Dr. Solander was 
yielding to the influence of intense cold in Terra 
del Fuego, but was saved by the firmness of Sir 
Joseph Banks. Richmond, the black, lay down 
on the snow to sleep, and died. 

There is a close analogy between this state and 
the hybernation of animals, although the causes are 
not similar. Animalcule often become torpid for 
lack of moisture, and, even after the lapse of twen- 
ty-seven years, have been revivified by water. The 
smdWfui-cularia anastobea will repeatedly become 
animated and lively by a single drop of water, its 
previous condition being completely quiescent. 
The snail, the alligator, indeed most of the ophidi- 
an and saurian reptiles, assume the torpid state in 



400 ANALYSIS OF TRANCE AND ITS SYNONYMES. 

a period of extreme drought ; and Humboldt states 
this also of the centenes solosus, a Madagascar 
hedgehog. 

This hybernation of animals, as of the marmot 
and the dormouse, resembles the deep sleep ari- 
sing from cold of a certain degree ; for if this be 
intense, they will sometimes be momentarily roused 
from it. They may be constantly kept awake by 
heat and powerful light. 

Thus hybernation and the sleep of plants take 
place from the withdrawal of stimuli, heat being 
the animal, light the vegetable stimulus. 

Cast. The sleep of plants % a fiction, surely ! 

Ev. Nay, a truth. The irritability of plants is 
excited by their peculiar stimulus; when this is 
withdrawn, they fall to sleep. Most of the discous 
flowers turn to the sun in his course, as the sun- 
flower, the helianthus, and the croton. The acacia 
leaves at noon point towards the zenith. The tam- 
arind, the oxalis, and the trefoil fold their leaves 
on the exclusion of light. The evening primrose 
shuts its blossom at sunset, while that minion of 
the moon, the night-blowing cactus, then only be- 
gins to bloom ; perhaps like the owl, and goatsuck- 
er, and bat, who find the sun too powerful an exci- 
tant. 

Vegetables may be put asleep by the withdraw- 
al of proper stimulus — the exclusion of this light. 
JBut this is a law of nature, and ordained for a spe- 
cial purpose. It is chiefly during fructification ; 
the leaves at night folding around the flowers and 
seed-vessels, to protect them from the chilling 
blight of the night cold, which would congeal their 
juices. In this condition of the plant its irritabil- 
ity ceases, but the circulation of its sap-vessels is 
not suspended. Its vitality continues, but if the 
exercise of its peculiar phenomena be long discon- 



ANALYSIS OF TRANCE AND ITS SYNONYMES. 401 

tinued, it will fade and die. Now the vis insita of 
the muscle resembles vegetable irritability ; and, 
as this is lost and sensibility suspended, the body 
is indeed in a condition of vegetable sleep ; for 
vegetables have not, of course, sensation, although 
the Darwinian romance would endow the dioncea, 
the hedysarum, and the mimosa with sensibility, and 
all the blossom-beauties of Flora with the fervour 
of sexual passion. Trance, then, is caused by the 
removal of a stimulus. As somnambulism may re- 
sult from a redundancy of nervous energy, trance 
and catalepsy, as well as incubus, seem to arise 
from an inefficient secretion or supply of this qual- 
ity, in whatever it may consist, or an impediment 
to its transmission from the sensorium or brain to 
the expansion of a nerve. Thus the motive pow- 
er of a muscle is in these diseases suspended, which 
in paralysis may be permanently impaired or de- 
stroyed. 

To describe this state, I must abound in nega- 
tives. The brain is not conscious : there is no sen- 
sation. Even the marrow, by its reflex faculty, does 
not excite a muscle : there is no action : the mind 
has no cognizance : the body is for a time paralyzed. 
What is there, then, which may be termed life % 
merely involuntary circulation and gentle breath- 
ing. In this condition, also, there is a congestion of 
dark blood about the brain and in the right side of 
the heart, the circulation being reduced to an ex- 
treme lentor or sluggishness, while in real asphyxy 
there is a total stagnation. 

I have done with minute pathology : as there are, 
however, two diseases, epilepsy and insanity, which 
may be the result of catalepsy, I may offer a pre- 
cept on the point. The propensity to trance can- 
not suddenly be averted, but the state of the body 
and mind are important studies for our treatment, 
26 L l 2 



402 ANALYSIS OF TRANCE AND ITS SYNONYMES. 

Melancholy and apathy are the features of the mind 
of the cataleptic, and languor and faulty secretions 
the symptoms of the body. Cheerful society, sym- 
pathy with suffering, but firmness in resisting sloth 
and erroneous fancies, and the direction of the pa- 
tient's mind to moral recreations, comprehend the 
sum of our mental treatment. 

It is equally essential to ensure regulation of the 
secretions, especially those of the liver. We should 
employ cupping from the nape of the neck if there 
be pain, or heat, or fulness of the head, and con- 
stant but gentle exercise. The head should not be 
low during sleep, nor should food be taken within 
two hours of retiring to rest. I believe obedience 
to these slight precepts will frequently mitigate, 
perhaps in the end avert the attacks, especially if* 
they have arisen from diseased conditions of the 
body, or gloomy or depraved studies, and deep 
contemplation. 

The most simple or unconnected form of cata- 
lepsy is that most likely to end in madness. Per- 
haps, too, in deep and gloomy subjects, which be- 
gin by absorbing mind and sense, the end is thus, 
so that cataleptic abstraction is but the revery or 
foretaste of mania. 

As to suspected cases of still existing vitality : 
where there is plethora, I would employ bleeding, 
or cupping, insufflation, Galvanism ; and I should 
not, in extreme cases, fear acupuncture of the heart, 
and galvanic shocks then transmitted through the 
needle. Beclard, in " La Pitie," in Paris, allows 
the needle to remain three or four minutes, and then 
withdraws it ; and I have learned from my Oriental 
friends that the Chinese practice this mode exten- 
sively. 



MESMERISM. 403 



MESMERISM. 

" Thus smiling, as some fly had tickled slumber, 
Not as Death's dart, being laugh'd at." — Cymbeline. 

" By some illusion see thou bring her here, 
I'll charm his eyes against she doth appear." 

" Such tricks hath strong imagination." 

Midsummer NighVs Dream. 

Ida. You are very formidable creatures, Evelyn, 
if you can touch and wound the heart of a sensitive 
girl so easily; we must be wary, dear Castaly. It 
must be a desperate case that justifies so desperate 
a remedy ; yet, with all this danger, the magi of 
our day will, as I have heard, induce by their art 
this very state of trance. 

Astr. Magnetic sleep. If the phenomena of 
this animal magnetism be not a mystery, it is at 
least a curiosity. And yet Evelyn will tell us that 
they, too, obey the common laws of our nature. I 
believe, however, there are stories of most strange 
and novel interest, beyond the scope even of his 
philosophy. 

Ev. The hand of a magnetizer seems, I confess, 
to effect a wonder ; but your challenge will be fa- 
tal to you, Astrophel. In this same question of an- 
imal magnetism we may discover the spring of all 
your mysteries. The close analogies between the 
natural and imparted phenomena of trance, and 
magnetic sleep, and somnambulism, and somnam- 
bulic blindness, and magnetic ecstasy ; even the 
frauds of lucid vision and clairvoyance, and the 
vaunted gift of prophetic divination, with the ex- 
planation of some, and the refutation of others, will 
dispel the most subtle arguments in proof of divine 
influence, seeing that the process is conducted by 
men of mortal mould, who claim no merit even for 
the possession of occult learning. 

Cast. Mercy, dearest Evelyn, mercy. No more 



404 MESMERISM. 

philosophy to-night. The smile of yon planet Ve- 
nus, that was twinkling from out its cerulean blue, 
is veiled in a cloud, for our cold discourse is trea- 
son to its influence. Be ready with your stories, 
Astrophel. 

Ev. The history of Mesmerism is a romance in 
itself, dear Castaly. If I invade not the province 
of Astrophel, I will, as some apology for my dull 
prosing, sketch its progress by way of episode. 

You must know, then, that it was Maximilian 
Holl who first, from the influence of his magnets 
on the body, imparted the practical idea of animal 
magnetism to Mesmer, who had already written his 
inaugural thesis, at Vienna, on " Planetary Influ- 
ence," and had laid down this unblushing aphorism : 
" There is one health, one disease, one remedy, and 
one physician, and that physician am I." His im- 
mediate proselytes were Deslon at Paris, and 
Gmelin at Heilbronne, and Reicke at Stutgard, 
and Kluge at Berlin. Encouraged by the Sweden- 
borgian tenets, this magic brought immense rev- 
enue into the purses of Mainanduc in England, and 
the rest of its revivers, so that one hundred guin- 
eas were given for a course of lectures and exper- 
iments, and fifteen guineas for a consultation and 
the imparting of its influence. 

In after times, Miss Prescott, among others, 
gained great fame in the art ; but De Lauterbourg 
was one of its most popular professors. Three 
thousand patients, it is said, were often waiting for 
the magnetic influence about his house at Ham- 
mersmith. 

In 1784, an ordonnance of the French king con- 
firmed Mesmer in his working of these apparent 
miracles. By tractions on the body, either with 
the hand or by substances magnetized with his 
" imponderable fluid," by champooing, and the ac- 



MESMERISM. 405 

compartiment of sweet music, a state of enchant- 
ment of the senses v/as induced. Convulsions and 
mania were often excited in the " Hall of Crisis," 
which was lined by soft cushions to protect the 
convulsionaries. These paroxysms and tempests 
of the brain Mesmer seemed to control, like a 
second Prospero, with his wand of enchantment, 
gliding, in robes of silk, among the multitude of 
devotees whom novelty and voluptuousness had 
attracted to his shrine. 

To study and report on these mysteries, com- 
missioners were appointed by the " Faculty of 
Medicine," by the " Academy of Sciences," and 
by the " Royal Society of Medicine." These savans 
referred all to the influence of imagination, or of 
emotion in sensitive systems ; and that there must 
be this sensitive predisposition is often proved, for 
idiots, and those who have been blindfold, and un- 
conscious children, remain uninfluenced, although it 
is declared by one that he magnetized an idiot baby I 

I must observe, that before the commissions in 
Paris, especially that of which Franklin was a 
member, not the slightest influence was observed ; 
and the experiments of Monsieur Berner, who was 
the chief manipulator, were a perfect failure, espe- 
cially in regard to the clairvoyance. 

Astrophel reminds me by his frown — 

Astr. That magnetic power is not granted to 
all ; that all possess not the essential qualities of 
mind and body. It was affirmed that the operator 
must have his mind abstracted, and teeming with 
affection and benevolence towards his patients ; 
must believe himself a very magnet, and feel a de- 
sire of benefiting mankind. Thus a sympathy, or 
incorporation of atmospheres, was induced, by 
which disease was influenced ; and even in per- 
sons distant from each other, by an intensity of 



406 MESMERISM. 

thought, the patient tasted, smelled, or heard the 
flavours, odours, or sounds which at that moment 
affected the senses of the operator. The magnetizer 
must thus be confident that, by his will, he can pass 
his whole nervous energy into his patient. It is 
essential, also, that the mind of the patient should 
have a corresponding willingness to he magnetized. 

Ev. And this congenial Platonism is sometimes 
so intense, that offers of magnetic marriage are 
made by the ecstatic ladies to their magnetizers, 
even though it may not be leap-year, on the plea 
that the loneliness of magnetic widowhood distress- 
ed them, and that the possession of a sleeping part- 
ner was better than sleeping alone. 

Under this interesting disposition for magnetic 
union, the eyes of the maiden being fixed on the 
magnetizer intensely, his hands were passed before 
her body, his fingers thus forming natural con- 
ductors, by which the magnetic fluid was conveyed 
from the positive to the negative magnetic body. 
Then came the wonders of this influence. The 
patient was warmed by the benevolence of the 
magnetizer, who felt an aura or tingling in the part 
corresponding to any painful part of the patient's 
body which was relieved or cured. Indeed, Ber- 
trand assures us that many told him they saw a 
blue fluid streaming from his fingers when he mag- 
netized them. 

The secret of this is closely analogous to the 
effect of brooding over sorrow : the mind of the 
patient is concentrated on the spot to which the 
passes are directed ; and, as we know that disease 
can be excited thus by imagination (especially in 
the hypochondriac), so it is a truth that this con- 
centration may remove disease and pain, especially 
by the superaddition of faith. 

Astr. But the magnetizer, as they said, was not 



MESMERISM. 407 

always in a state to operate, and required a certain 
training. So it was observed that Caspar Hauser's 
cat did not follow him after he had eaten meat ; 
his magnetic and somnambulent qualities were de- 
stroyed by animal food, although they were so 
abundant in his wilder state, as his history will 
thus illustrate to those who believe it : 

" As I came into the room, and the door of the 
deceased person was opened, which I did not 
know, I felt a sudden dragging on both sides of 
my breast, as if any one wished to pull me into the 
room. As I went on and proceeded towards the 
sick person, a very strong breath blew on me from 
behind, and the pulling which I felt before in my 
breast I now felt in my shoulders. I went towards 
the window; the sick person followed me. At 
the time that I wished to ask a question of Mr. 
Von Gutter, I felt a trembling in my left foot, and 
it became unwell. She went back again, and that 
trembling left me. She seated herself under the 
canopy, and said, ' Will not the gentleman sit 
down V Hereupon Mr. Professor Hensler said 
to her, she should see me. So, as she drew nigh 
to me, within two or three steps, I was still more 
unwell than before, and I felt pains in all my limbs. 
Mr. Professor Hensler told her that I was the man 
who had been wounded (that is, by the attempt 
which had been made to assassinate him) ; at the 
same time, she noticed my scar, and pointed to- 
wards it ; then came the air strong upon my fore- 
head, and I felt pain in it ; also my left foot began 
to tremble greatly. The sick person seated her- 
self under the canopy, and said that she was ill ; 
and I also said that I was so unwell that I must 
sit down. I sat down in the other room : now the 
other foot began to twitter. Although Mr. Von 
G-utter held my knees, I could not keep them still. 



408 MESMERISM. 

Now a violent beating of my heart came on- me, 
and there was a heat in all my body : that beating 
of the heart left me afterward ; and I had a twit- 
tering in my left arm, which ceased after some 
minutes, and I was again something better. This 
condition lasted until the next morning, when I had 
a headache again and a twittering in all my limbs, 
still not so violent. In the afternoon, about three 
o'clock, it came again, something less, and left me 
earlier; then I was quite well again." 

" The Somnambulist was greatly affected by the 
presence of Hauser. I heard that afterward, when 
she was asleep, she had said these words : ' That 
was a hard struggle for me.' She felt indisposition 
from this process even on the next day." 

Ev. The first sensation from magnetism is usu- 
ally that of slight vertigo, a state of musing or rev- 
ery succeeding, the mind being lulled into abstrac- 
tion, as it is by the rippling of water, the busy hum 
of bees, or the murmuring of the iEolian harp. I 
would explain this feeling by the term confusion 
of the senses ; for a certain period must elapse ere 
an external object make an impression on the mind. 
When, therefore, objects or sounds become extreme- 
ly rapid, the perception is confused, and the mind, 
left, as it were, to itself, cannot follow the impres- 
sions so as to associate them, and thus the magnetic 
ecstasy ensues. 

Astr. But Monsieur de Paysegur, who first ex- 
cited magnetic somnambulism, magnetized trees 
and ropes, by which he converted those who clung 
to them into sleep-walkers. Dr. Elliotson also 
mesmerized a sovereign by merely looking on it; 
and a girl, who intuitively selected it from a heap 
of others, was instantly struck with coma. 

Ev. The last is a very frail experiment. Pay- 
segur often failed in his illustrations, and then the 



MESMERISM. 409 

cunning juggler explained this by affirming that 
the trees counter-magnetized each other. Now, 
whatever maybe the influence imparted by this trac- 
tion, the phenomena of excited somnambulism are 
similar precisely to those spontaneously occurring. 
Magnetic sleep, or ecstasis, is its precursor ; and 
there is a total unconsciousness of it when awake. 
Here is one of those close analogies that are the 
most potent arguments on which the question of 
magnetism rests ; for, in all the states alluded to, 
the interval of ecstasy is a blank. And, as in the 
cases of intense alarm, as you remember, the mes- 
meric ecstasy will cause a sensitive girl to forget 
the present, while the scenes of youth and infancy 
pass vividly before her memory. 

Now the effects of the passes of magnetism are 
referred to six degrees, the chief conditions being 
those of sleep, somnambulism, and clairvoyance. 
The essence of the last, it seems, is combined with 
a blending- of one's own feeling and nature with 
those of others ; a reuniting, in fact, of body and 
soul, once separated from that individual whole, 
which some philosophers, as Hecker, believed the 
whole human race to be. You observe my fideli- 
ty, Astrophel 1 

It must be confessed that some of the experi- 
ments at which I have myself assisted exhibit very 
strange results. In some, there is the propensity 
to chatter nonsense, a system of one form of hys- 
teria of which the analogy is perfect. One little 
jade created much amusement by inserting super- 
numerary syllables, thus — opiporivaytumwhatsty. 

The insensibility of the nostril to the most pow- 
erful ammonia is a very imposing fact, one which 
must strike us more than that of insensibility of the 
eye to light, or the ear to sound ; for the faculty 
of perception may be often suspended in either of 
Mm 



410 MESMERISM. 

those organs of sense if attention be powerfully 
diverted to another point, or, as it is by the ab- 
straction of magnetic ecstasy, not directed to any. 

So that I do not wonder when thoughtless pros- 
elytes believe these effects to be miraculous, or 
credit the assertions of Pereaud, in his "Antidcemon 
of Mascon" that " the devil causeth witches to 
fall into ecstasies, so that a man would say their 
souls were out of their body ; or those of Bodin, in 
his " Theatre of Universal Nature" that " those 
that are rapt of the devil feel neither stripes nor 
cuttings." 

So that the honour of the magnetic monomania 
must at last be conceded to the fallen angel. 

Ida. And are all these wonders worked only to 
excite curiosity ? 

Astr. I believe there is some good in it. Is it 
not certain that, during this state of magnetic sleep, 
operations have been performed without creating 
pain ! The lady on whom Mons. Chapelain oper- 
ated talked coolly and unconsciously during its 
performance. And Jules Cloquet, in Paris, am- 
putated the breast of a lady who had been put into 
an ecstasy or state of apathetic trance by a mes- 
merizer. 

Ev. It is, I believe, quite true that she was per- 
fectly unconscious of the operation ; but even this 
is not safe. Pain is given us as a warning against 
extreme injury, that by our complaint or suffering 
the surgeon's mind may be on its guard ; for the 
body is so far in disorder when it is chilled by this 
apathetic spell, that it may sink under fatal inju- 
ries, although they may be endured by the mind 
unconscious of its peril or its state. As a very cu- 
rious antitype to these cases, it is stated in a med- 
ical gazette that a young lady fell down in an hys- 
terical fit and was insensible for two days. As a 



MESMERISM. 411 

puffy swelling arose, she was trephined, but there 
was no disease of the brain. In two days after 
this she awoke, and expressed all the steps of the 
operation of which she had been 'painlessly sensible. 

Astr. And in this state of ecstasis, is there not 
strange havoc played with the senses by then- seem- 
ing displacement or transference 1 

The philosophers will tell us that the ganglia in 
the abdomen become, as it were, little brains, and 
the plexuses and the nerves of the skin become, 
like those of the senses, capable of imparting the 
idea of visible objects to those ganglia, and of ren- 
dering a slight whisper distinctly audible. This is 
all very fine and very material, but this straining 
at explanation is itself a proof of mystery. Van 

Ghest records the case of Mademoiselle B , a 

young lady who was magnetized : she assured him 
that while she was intently looked upon, she felt 
her eyes and brain leave her head, and become 
fixed in her stomach, in which situation she saw 
acutely ; but if she was in the slightest degree dis- 
turbed, the eyes and their sense seemed to return 
to her head. 

The stories recorded in the book of the Rev. 
Chauncey Townsend are not less curious than this. 

Ev. Although I take the metaphysics of a divine 
with reservation, his facts may not be doubted ; 
for there are other powerful impressions that will 
produce phenomena as curious. The arm of a 
young man in the " Ospidale della Vitta," at Bo- 
logna, in 1832, was grasped by a convulsive pa- 
tient. Violent spasms succeeded, and he lost the 
senses of taste, smell, and sensibility of the skin, 
but he could hear if the voice was applied on the 
stomach, and could, at that spot, discriminate be- 
tween different substances. 

Another patient in the same hospital was subject 



412 MESMERISM. 

every third day to violent convulsions, during the 
continuance of which he lost entirely the use of all 
his senses, and could neither hear, see, nor smell. 
His hands also became so firmly clinched that it 
would be impossible to open them without break- 
ing the fingers. Nevertheless, Dr. Ciri, the phy- 
sician under whose charge he was placed, discov- 
ered that the epigastric region, at about two fingers' 
breadth above the navel, received all the impres- 
sions of the senses, so as to replace them complete- 
ly. If the patient was spoken to while the finger 
was placed on this spot, he gave answers, and even, 
when desired, opened his hands of his own accord. 
If any substance or matter was placed there, he 
could describe its form and quality, its colour and 
smell. As long as the finger was kept on the 
stomach, the convulsion gradually diminished until 
it entirely disappeared; but if the finger were 
placed on the heart, the convulsion returned with 
increased violence, and continued as long as the 
finger was kept in that position. If a flute was 
played while the finger was kept on the stomach, 
the patient heard the music ; but if the finger was 
taken away, and placed on the heart, and then ta- 
ken back again to its former position, the man 
asked why they played by intervals ; yet the flute 
had never ceased. These experiments were all 
made in the presence of the professors and stu- 
dents of the hospital. 

I will not counsel you, Astrophel, as to the extent 
of your belief in these strange tales, but extreme 
exaggeration often lessens the interest which sci- 
entific minds would take in these curiosities. 

These pictures are correct in their outline, but 
the artists have not spared their colours. They will 
remind us, who are learned in legends, of that illu- 
sive monomania among the monks of Mount Athos, 
who believed that they could at pleasure attain a 



MESMERISM. 413 

celestial vision by communing devoutly with the 
Deity, while their attention or their sight was di- 
rected to the umbilicus ! And they were therefore 
called "Omphalopsychians." We discover, also, 
very close analogies to this mental concentration 
in the acuteness with which one sense is endowed 
on the failure of another. The delicacy of touch 
in the blind is often extreme ; I knew a blind lady 
who played an excellent rubber, passing her finger 
lightly over the card spots ; and more curious still 
are the cases of Miss M'Avoy, of Stanley, the or- 
ganist, and of Professor Saunderson. De Luc tells 
us of a lady who read distinctly by passing her 
fingers over the page, even of a strange book. In 
Laura Bridgman, an American girl, an inmate of 
the Institution of Boston since 1837, the whole fac- 
ulty of perception was concentrated in the one sense 
of touch. At the age of two, sight, and hearing, 
and smelling, and almost taste, deserted her. To 
this interesting creature, through the acuteness of 
her sense of touch in tracing letters, has been im- 
parted so much knowledge, that the moral senti- 
ments and the congenial affections of the heart are 
now beautifully displayed in her character. If 
by the dumb alphabet, or finger-talking, conversa- 
tion is commenced with her, she follows the fingers 
with her arm with extreme rapidity, so that scarce a 
letter escapes her. Such are the wonders of this 
child's intelligence, that her mind has been cited 
as illustrative of innate sentiment ; but the very fa- 
cility is enough to explain her actions. 

Le Cat writes of a blind sculptor at Voltera, who 
modelled features most faithfully by the touch. 

A French gentleman lost the integrity of every 
sense, but sensation remained in half of his face, on 
which he received the correspondence of his friends 
by their tracing on it letters or forms. 
M m 2 



414 MESMERISM. 

In Mr. Eschke's establishment at Berlin, conver- 
sation was earned on by tracing letters on the clothes 
of the back. 

A Bolognese, on witnessing a woman in acute 
hysteria, became occasionally convulsed, and im- 
penetrably deaf; if, however, the slightest whisper 
was breathed to the pit of the stomach, he heard 
distinctly. 

From Andral's Lectures, to please you, Astro- 
phel, I will select this fragment : 

" I saw yesterday a young lady who has been fre- 
quently magnetized, and who, on my visit, present- 
ed some very remarkable circumstances. After a 
fit of indigestion she fell into the ecstatic state, in 
which she continued when I saw her. Her skin 
was perfectly insensible, and her eyes were open 
like animals' in whom the fifth pair of nerves has 
been divided. She could perceive light, knew the 
difference between day and night, for instance, but 
she could see and distinguish nothing else. She 
could not speak, but by signs expressed that her 
intellect was unusually active. But the most re- 
markable of the phenomena she presented was a 
singular exaltation of the sense of hearing. So ex- 
traordinarily delicate had this become, that she dis- 
tinctly perceived sounds inaudible to myself and 
several other persons." 

Cams, unmindful of the existence of a state of 
abstract revery resembling sleep, records the case 
of a young ecclesiastic who' composed sermons in 
a state of slumber, correcting and adding to them 
with peculiar care. And this is the deduction, that 
the sense of vision seemed to be transferred to the 
fingers, as the eyes were perfectly blinded to the 
writing paper. His eyes, when he sat for his por- 
trait, should have been painted at the tips of his 
fingers. 



MESMERISM. 415 

James Mitchell, congenitally deaf and blind, dis- 
criminated his friends from strangers, and even 
formed a fair estimate of character, by the smell 
of the parties. And there was a deaf woman 
(writes Le Cat) who could read, and even tell the 
difference of languages, from the silent motion of 
the Up. 

From these very curious illustrations we may 
confess that these lines in Hudibras are no fiction : 
" Communities of senses 
To chop and change intelligences, 
As Rosicrucian virtuosis 
Can see with ears and hear with noses." 

For so strange are the synonymes of the senses, 
that the blind will express their notion of colour by 
sound ; the tint of scarlet is like the sound of a 
trumpet. From this hint, probably, St. Amand, in 
the " Pilgrims of the Rhine," speaks of a visible 
music. 

Ida. Do we not perceive, also, something of this 
acuteness in the sense of touch under certain other 
conditions %/ In the story of Caspar Hauser, wheth- 
er it be romance or reality, we read the following 
illustration of the effect of mineral traction : j 

" Once, when the physician, Dr. Osterhausen, 
and the royal crown fiscal, Brunner, from Munich, 
happened to be present, Daumer led Caspar, in 
order to try him, to a table covered with an oil- 
cloth, upon which lay a sheet of paper, and desired 
him to say whether any metal was under it. He 
moved his finger over it, and then said, ' There it 
draws.' ' But this time,' replied Daumer, 4 you 
are nevertheless mistaken, for,' withdrawing the 
paper, ' nothing lies under it.' Caspar seemed at 
first to be somewhat embarrassed, but he put his 
finger again to the place where he thought he had 
felt the drawing, and assured them repeatedly that 
he there felt a drawing. The oil-cloth was then 






416 CLAIRVOYANCE. 

removed, a stricter search was made, and a needle 
was actually found there." 

Caspar Hauser might have felt this, or a cunning 
youth might have palmed on us his idea for a truth. 
Yet, I confess, Parkinson also relates the case of a 
woman who fainted on the touch of a stethoscope, 
exclaiming that it was " drawing her too strongly." 

Cast. And of clairvoyance — have you no inci- 
dents, Astrophel'? 

Astr. Many. Listen to the following fragments. 
One from Andral's Lectures : 

"M. Feruss was present at the experiment. A 
watch was held behind the individual's head. * I 
see,' said he, ' something that shines.' ' "What is it?' 
* A watch.' He was asked the hour, and replied 
exactly. Two different watches were tried. He 
was equally precise. The watches were taken out 
of the room, and the hands altered. He still told 
the hours and minutes expressed on the dials." 

Another, from an English newspaper in 1833 : 

" Mr. Barnaby ('twas at Bow-street) took his 
watch from his pocket, and said, * What have I got 
in my hand V 'A watch,' was the reply. ' What 
is it made of'?' ' Gold.' ' What chain is attached 
to it V ' None at all,' said the boy ; ' there is a 
riband to it.' ' Can you tell at what hour the hand 
stands?' 'Yes, at twelve.' Mr. B. showed his 
watch, and the hands were at twelve precisely. 
Mr. B. then produced his purse from his pocket, 
and asked the boy the colour of it, and what it con- 
tained, and his answers were, without having the 
least opportunity of turning round towards the 
bench, that one end of the purse was brown and 
the other yellow, and that the brown end contained 
sovereigns and the yellow end silver. Mr. B. ad- 
mitted the correctness of the description, and, ta- 
king some silver from his pocket, asked the boy to 



CLAIRVOYANCE. 417 

describe the different pieces. ' What is this V 
'Sixpence,' said the boy, 'and of the date 1819/ 
• What is the next V ' A shilling, and dated 1816,' 
was the reply. And when the clerk brought forth 
another coin, and asked similar questions, the boy 
said, ' That is a sixpence of the date of 1817 ;' and 
all these guesses proved to be correct." 

Townsend and Wood, at Antwerp and Paris, 
produced this second sight in several instances. 
E. A., with eyes bandaged, read two hundred pages 
of print, and even written music. 

Ev. A little more sifting of these cases, Astro- 
phel, and they would resemble that of the catalep- 
tic female of Amiens, related by Petelin, who also 
professed to tell the spots of a card, unseen by her. 
But it was discovered that the physician glided it 
beneath the bedclothes. Or that told by Bertrand, 
of another ecstatic female : "While lying entranced 
in a chamber illuminated by a candle, her ring was 
removed from her finger by Monsieur Bertrand, 
and given to a person standing near him. She was 
asked who had her ring: 'Mr. Eyre has it, in his 
trousers pocket.' Mr. Bertram exclaimed that she 
was wrong, for it was not to Mr. Eyre the ring was 
given. The lady persisted in her statement, and, 
on immediate inquiry, it was found that the person 
who first was given the ring had secretly conveyed 
it to Mr. Eyre." 

The pages of history are not deficient in these 
pretensions to miracle. From Ulrick Zwingle we 
learn that Thomas Aquinas, the evangelical doctor, 
professed, by intense thought, to throw himself into 
ecstasy, in which strange visions and mysteries of 
another existence passed before him. 

Matthew Paris writes of a monk of Evesham, 
and of a certain Sir Oiven, that, in one of these 
ecstasies, was favoured with an introduction into 
27 



418 MAGNETIC ECSTASY, 

Saint Patrick's purgatory. So the mad visionary, 
Jacob Boehm, fell into many strange trances, and 
at last were revealed to him "the origin of nature; 
the formation of all things ; and even divine prin- 
ciples and intelligent natures !" 

But the case of Santa Theresa, if we can but be- 
lieve the testimony of so accomplished a hypocrite, 
presents phenomena far more remarkable than all 
these. " Her frame was naturally delicate, her 
imagination lively, and her mind, incapable of be- 
ing fixed by trivial objects, turned with avidity to 
those which religion offered the moment they were 
presented to her view. But, unfortunately, meet- 
ing with the writings of Saint Jerome, she became 
enamoured of the monastic life, and, quitting the 
line for which nature designed her, she renounced 
the most endearing ties, and bound herself by the 
irrevocable vow. Deep melancholy then seized on 
her, and increased to such a degree, that for many 
days she lay both motionless and senseless, like one 
who is in a trance. Her tender frame, thus shaken, 
prepared her for ecstasies and visions such as it 
might appear invidious to repeat, were they not re- 
lated by herself and by her greatest admirers. She 
tells us that, in the fervour of her devotion, she not 
only became insensible to everything around her, 
but that her body was often lifted up from the earth, 
although she endeavoured to resist the motion. 
And Bishop Yessen relates, in particular, that when 
she was going to receive the JBlucharist at Avila, 
she was raised in a rapture higher than the grate, 
through which, as is usual in nunneries, it was pre- 
sented to her. She often heard the voice of God 
when she was recovered from a trance ; but some- 
times the devil, by imitation, endeavoured to de- 
ceive her, yet she was always able to detect the 
fraud." 



MAGNETIC ECSTASY. 419 

So that Theresa's life was an elysium on earth, 
and she might well have cried out in her ecstasy, 

" sic sine vita, 
Vivere quam suave est, sic sine morte mori." 

Yet the modern proselytes to Mesmerism would 
scarcely believe this a fiction, but an illustration of 
that lucid vision which may, it is believed, be so 
highly excited as to associate the being with uni- 
versal nature : a creed grounded on the expansion 
or illimitable nature of thought or mind, by which 
it seems to leave the body, carrying with it its con- 
sciousness. 

So the disciples of Mesmer asserted that, when 
they thought or spoke warmly of absent persons, 
they would both appear in their eidolon ; and also 
that they were, at that exact time, speaking or 
thinking of them. This was Shelley's conviction, 
that minds sympathetically imparted ideas and 
thoughts; particles, indeed, of the "mens divinicr." 
So that they might well see in the dark. 

Brown would be in a flood of joy to hear the af- 
firmations of these ecstatics, whose spirits, as they 
believe and avow, are for the time released from 
the chains of mortality. " Why," exclaimed one 
of these half-spiritualized creatures, " why do you 
bring me again to life 1 Would you depart from 
me, my body would grow cold, my soul would not 
return to it, and I should be happy." 

Astr. You are fond of caricature, Evelyn. I 
speak of sober truths only. I am told that the 
powers of acquirement may be so increased by 
magnetism as to resemble new faculties. A lady, 
during a sort of ecstasy, sung most scientifically 
church music, although when awake she entirely 
failed, and had forgotten all ; and others will speak 
languages and sentiments of which they are per- 
fectly unconscious when awake. 



420 MAGNETIC ECSTASY. 

There was a girl in the vicinity of Bedford Row, 
of whose case there are related similar wonders or 
this magnetically-imparted accomplishment; and 
her beauty was so enchanting as to transcend the 
brightest visions of Michael Angelo or Correggio. 

Ev. Like that of the inspired somnambule, ot 
whom "Wolfart thus writes in his " Annals :" " An 
evil spirit ushered in her somnambulic sleep, and 
then a good spirit spread its wings around her, and 
when they had conversed, he flew with her to the 
Eternal City, through the sun and the moon ; and 
while there, tranced scenes were around her, and 
her spirit was enjoying her beatitude ; her face was 
like the face of a seraph, and no mortal painter 
might essay to trace its beauty." So say those who 
saw this mystery. 

Astr. Yet, as to the prophetic power imparted 
by magnetism, cases are recorded by our enthusi- 
astic proselytes which throw the spells of the con- 
juror into an eclipse — 

Ev. And therefore forbid belief. 

Astr. Even those displayed before our learned 
bodies. Madame Celini Sauvage, you remember, 
in the presence of the committee, in Paris, was 
placed in somnambulism. Even while insensible to 
stimuli, she formed, it is recorded, a correct judg- 
ment of the diseases of persons around her, espe- 
cially in the person of M. Marc, one of the com- 
mittee ; and in that of a young lady, on whom M. 
Dupuytren had operated for dropsy, and had tried 
the effects of the milk of a goat which had been 
anointed with mercury. Madame, unconscious of 
this, prescribed the very same remedy. You remem- 
ber the report, Evelyn. 

Ev. I remember, but believe it not. 

Cast. And is it thus with all our legends % have 
you no more faith in your own order 1 There is 



MAGNETIC INTUITION. 421 

the learned physician, Justin Kerner. You have 
not forgotten, Astrophel, his beautiful story of that 
most accomplished somnambule, the Prophetess of 
Prevorst, who seemed, as she said, to draw from 
the air a living principle, and whose very vitality, 
it was believed, was preserved by the magnetic in- 
fluence. The body of this ethereal creature en- 
folded her spirit like a veil of film ; she was a very 
flower of light, living on sunbeams. Her senses 
were lighted up by the minutest atom. A web of 
gossamer stung her waxen skin like a nettle. At 
the pale green light of a glow-worm she fell into 
ecstatic sleep ; and then (as to my own Tasso) came 
to her spectral visitants, with whom she conversed, 
and whose colourless forms were visible even to 
her earthly companions. This fair creature had, 
as the story goes, been some time dead, when her 
mother made passes over her cold face and lips, and 
lo ! her eyes opened, and a tremour was on her 
lip. Were I Astrophel, methinks I would make a 
pilgrimage to Lowenstein, where her body lies. 
And now, Evelyn, if you will, reprove me for my 
wildness, but confess there must be a sort of truth 
in legends so circumstantial as these. 

Ev. A fair question, dearest Castaly. Yes, it is 
the crude or false interpretation of that sort of truth, 
a transient glimpse, it may be, of some embryo prin- 
ciple, that leads to popular error. A baseless the- 
ory is raised on an isolated fact, and infantile sci- 
ence, bursting from its leadingf-strinors ere it can 
crawl, topples headlong down the precipice, and 
splits on the rock of hypothetical presumption. 

And then the confusion into which the mind is 
thrown by the definitions and conclusions of mag- 
netizers would make a very Babel of the fair field 
of philosophy. The least perplexing, perhaps, is 
that of the French savans, who referred magnetism 
N N 



422 FALLACY OF MESMERISM. 

to the efforts of a fluid, matter consisting of fire, air, 
and spirit, to preserve its equilibrium in certain 
bodies which were, as to their capacity for this fluid, 
in a state of plus and minus. There is nothing very 
unphilosophical in this ; for the essence of magnet- 
ism is somewhat analogous to eccentric derange- 
ment of mind, a disturbance of that order or sym- 
metry among the faculties and actions by which 
one is highly excited and another is comparatively 
passive. In a word, Mesmerism is true in part : it 
may induce catalepsy, somnambulism, exalted sen- 
sation, apathetic insensibility, suspended circula- 
tion, even death. Clairvoyance and prophecy alone 
are the impositions as regards its effects, as the "blue 
flame" at the finger tips is of its nature. 

One folly more. Mesmer himself vaunted to Dr. 
Von Ellikon, " Twenty years ago I magnetized the 
sun," &c, so that the miracle of Joshua was but a 
stroke of magnetism. Indeed, Richter, rector of 
the school of Dessau, affirms that all the miracles 
of the Testament were but the sequences of mag- 
netic passes. And Kieser refers all to a " telluric 
spirit/' a sort of magic, of which the sun and moon 
are the grand reservoirs ; nay, this influence is the 
real cause of sleep and waking. 

Ida. So that we are mesmerized by the moon at 
nightfall, and unmesmerized by the sun at the 
opening of the dawn. 

Ev. Then there were some aphorisms of Wolf- 
art about fiddling to the viscera with his magnetic 
medicine, and working them up, as it were, to a jig 
or a bolero. These are the visions of a madman. 
But surely the illusion regarding this mysterious 
fluid is confessed in Dupotet's own notion of his 
own wondrous faculty, when he asserts his belief 
that animal magnetism is analogous to the royal 
touch, and the mysteries of Apollo, and iEsculapius, 



ANALYSIS OF ANIMAL MAGNETISM. 423 

and Isis, the miracles of Vespasian, and the Sibyl- 
line prophecies. 

Astr. You sneer at this as you did at the blue 
flame ; but Dupotet assures us that while he is 
magnetizing his patients, he feels a sensation at the 
points of his fingers resembling the aura from dif- 
fused electricity. ( Now is it not fair to ask if elec- 
tro-magnetism may not reside in the animal as well 
as in the mineral^ in man as well as in the torpedo 
and gymnotus ? And why may there not be a con- 
dition of intercommunication or en rapport, a mag- 
netic aura creeping through the nerves of each 
body?/ 

We should not, therefore, make any hasty decis- 
ion against the presence of an aura streaming from 
the fingers and directed by the will. Monsieur 
Deleuze said, in Paris, " I do not know if this be 
material or spiritual, nor to what distance it is im- 
pelled ; but it is impelled and directed by my will, 
for if I cease to will, the influence instantly ceases." 

I remember Priestley opined that phlogiston in 
our bodies produced electricity, which was destined 
for our own purposes merely. But as the silurus 
and the torpedo possess the power of imparting 
theirs, although at the expense of their animal pow- 
er, I presume to think that concentrated mind may 
impart our own nervous influence to others. 

Ev. I admire the acuteness of your question, 
Astrophel ; but you are now come down from your 
clouds ; you are descending unawares to physiol- 
ogy. There are, doubtless, many peculiar states 
of the nervous system at present inexplicable. I 
grant it is possible that the influence of the nervous 
energy may become so eccentric as to illustrate the 
phenomena of magnetism, if as some believe, this 
influence depends on a subtle fluid analogous to 
light, heat, and electricity, the nerve conveying 
this fluid as the wire conducts the electric. 



424 ANALYSIS OP ANIMAL MAGNETISM. 

Thus an influence, which is apparently physical, 
may be, in reality, mental, for there is usually con- 
sciousness of the contact. M. Bertrand believed 
that the mind alone of the patient was acted on, 
and this is strengthened by the experiments of the 
Abbe Faria, who produced many of these phenom- 
ena by merely exclaiming to his sensitive visiters, 
" Dormez." 

Astr. Well, you are drawing the influences of 
mind and body very closely together, Evelyn. If 
animal magnetism be not the universal influence 
of sensitive beings, what is personal sympathy ? 

Ev. It is not that mysterious freemasonry of the 
senses which may impart a superhuman knowledge, 
or confer a power of personal recognition ; yet 
we are required to believe such stories. 

Astr. And are there not many well attested'? 
There was a Monsieur de la Tour Landrie, a no- 
bleman of France, who so powerfully influenced a 
young shoemaker by whom he was measured, that 
the youth fell into a senseless syncope, and profuse 
haemorrhage succeeded it. This influence was re- 
peated, and excited so deep an interest in the mind 
of the noble, that he instituted an inquiry regarding 
his birth and fortunes ; and the result was, that 
Monsieur de la Tour discovered in the humble me- 
chanic the son of his sister, the Baronne de Vesines. 

The thrill of feeling with which the lover touches 
the lip of his mistress, the intense delight with which 
the mother presses her infant to her bosom, are il- 
lustrations of that power to which I allude. It is 
the magnetic touch of beauty which sends the fires 
of passion, not only thiough the bounding heart of 
youth, but even through the icy veins of the stoic. 
*' He that would preserve the liberty of his soul," 
said Socrates, "must abstain from kissing handsome 
people." "What, then," said Charmides, "must 



ANALYSIS OP ANIMAL MAGNETISM. 425 

1 be afraid of coming near a handsome woman % 
Nevertheless, I remember very well, and I believe 
you do so too, Socrates, that, being one day in com- 
pany with Critobulus's beautiful sister, who resem- 
bles him so much, as we were searching together 
for a passage in some author, you held your head 
close to that beautiful virgin, and I thought you 
seemed to take pleasure in touching her naked 
shoulder with yours." " Good God !" replied Soc- 
rates, " I will tell you truly how I was punished 
for it for five days after. I thought I felt in my 
shoulder a certain tickling pain as if I had been bit 
by gnats or pricked with nettles ; and I must con- 
fess, too, that during all that time I felt a certain 
hitherto unknown pain at my heart." 

Ev. So that " the crime," like that of Sir Peter 
Teazle, " carried its punishment along with it." 
But you must see that the mind of Socrates first ap- 
preciated beauty, ere this influence was imparted to 
him. Imagination is not certainly idle here, yet I 
grant that if the charm of substantial beauty or en- 
dearment be wanting, poesy will ever be but a cold 
and joyless sentiment. 

Astr. Then there is another mysterious sympa- 
thy, the fascination of the evil eye, or fascino. 
There were, both in Africa and in Illyria, writes 
Aulus Gellius, certain families believed to possess 
the power of destroying trees, flowers, and children, 
and this by merely praising them ; and Plutarch 
and Pindar refer to the credence of the Greeks on 
this point, who were wont to invoke the Fate Nem- 
esis against this fascination of an evil eye. 

I think, too, traces of this credence may be found 
in Ovid, and Horace, and Pliny. 

Ev. Yes, and in modern Italy the professors of 
the art are yet termed jettatori, or eye-throwers. 
But Valletta, an Italian author, conscious of the 
Nn2 



426 INFLUENCE OP FAITH. 

truth, boldly disclaims for his countrymen the no- 
tion of demoniac influence, referring it to physical 
impression, somewhat resembling the fascination of 
the eye of the rattlesnake, that drops, as we are 
told, the bird from the branch into its mouth. In 
that exquisite sympathy between mind and body 
(the sequence of an influence on sensibility, or on 
the senses) consists the secret of all this. 

You remember the effects of intense impression 
on the mind in the excitement of catalepsy, and, 
indeed, in causing instantaneous death : this is in- 
tense influence on the sensibility. The effects of 
deep impression on the sight or touch, by the pass- 
es of magnetism, are magnetic ecstasies : this is 
intense influence on the senses. So that all your 
mysteries are the result of this influence passing 
through the brain to the body ; and the vaunted 
miracles of Mesmer, and Bertrand, and Dupotet 
are, as I have said, impositions, chiefly as regards 
the nature of their influence; and, like these, the 
doctrines of Fludd the Seeker, of the Abbe Nollet, 
of Lavater, of Nicetas the Jesuit, and the quaint 
ideas of many other visionaries, which you may 
read in their writings, are really explicable by the 
laws of physiology. 

When the magnetizer asserts that a patient 
should possess a disposition to he acted on, he un- 
warily divulges his own secret; for this is nothing 
more than blind faith in a promise. And this 
credulity is most characteristic of that disordered 
condition of a nerve, acute sensibility, in which the 
slightest causes may effect a seeming wonder. Nay, 
even disease and death were so induced during the 
manipulations of Hensler and Emmelin. 

This also is the secret of that influence imparted 
by the touch of a seventh son ; or of the hand of a 
criminal hanging on the gallows ; or the revolting 
P 



INFLUENCE OP FAITH. 427 

precept of Pliny, that an epileptic should, drink the 
blood of a dying gladiator as it gushes from his 
wound ; or the stroking of Valentine Greatrex ; the 
sympathetic powder of Sir Kenelm Digby; the trac- 
tors of Perkins ; of chiromancy, rhabdomancy, and 
of other curiosities recorded in tracts and journals. 

In my professional life I have seen the same in- 
fluence, though infinitely less in degree, imparted, 
by an implicit confidence in the blessings of our 
science. Even Bertrand honestly confesses its 
power. 

A lady was thrown into deep sleep by the touch 
of a magnet, sent by him in a handkerchief from the 
distance of three hundred miles. But the same ef- 
fect was produced by the contact of unmagnetized 
cambric ; and Bertrand allows that where an ig- 
norance of his intention existed, even the magnetized 
talisman was powerless over his patient. 

I could tell you tales of bits of wood effecting all 
the wonders of the metallic tractors of Perkins ; 
and cubes of lead, and those of nickel, fraught, as 
a learned doctor had declared, with magnetic vir- 
tues ; but I spare you. 

From this superstitious faith spring also the mir- 
acles of that pious saint, who had assumed the staff 
of Saint Francis Xavier, the Prince Hohenloe. 
One of these was the cure of Miss O'Connor, at- 
tested by Dr. Baddeley, of Chelmsford, who had 
tried in vain to relieve the lady of acute neuralgia. 
She was directed to prostrate herself at the altar in 
Chelmsford at the moment when the sainted prince 
would kneel at his shrine in the Cathedral of Bam- 
berg. At the appointed time, during the solemn 
celebration of high mass, as she exclaimed, " Thy 
will be done, O Lord," the agonizing limb was 
painless. 

I do not doubt the possibility of such an incident. 



428 INFLUENCE OF FAITH. 

And here is the unfolding of another secret of these 
German magnetizers, who were believed to shoot 
at their patients with the unerring aim of a rifle, 
even though many miles might intervene. Nadler, 
as we are told in the " Asclepeion," was so good a 
shot, that he brought a woman to the ground at the 
moment he fired his magnetic aura at her, aiming 
between the eyes and the bosom, even at the dis- 
tance of eighteen miles. 

I am aware that this, my philosophy, would not 
pass current at the Vatican ; for " the congregation 
of the holy office, having once applied to the pope ■ 
to know if animal magnetism were lawful, and 
if penitents might be permitted to be operated on, 
his holiness replied that the application of princi- 
ples and means purely physical to things and ef- 
fects which are supernatural, for the purpose of 
explaining them physically, is nothing but an un- 
lawful and heretical deception." 

But I may tell you that his holiness himself was 
once a great monopolist of saints' cures, if we may 
believe a book, printed by Roberts, in London, in 
1605, entitled, " A Declaration of egregious Popish 
Impostures, to withdraw the hearts of religious 
men, under pretence of casting out devils ; prac- 
tised by Father Edmunds, alias Weston, a Jesuite, 
and divers Romish priests, his wicked associates.' , 

And, moreover, the interference of priests has 
often led to the interdiction of Protestants, in their 
scientific ministering to disease the most severe, as 
typhus fever, or surgical operations, because they 
were heretics ; while the profane Paracelsus says, 
11 It matters not, by God or devil, so he he cured ;" 
even without an indulgence, I presume, from Delia 
Ganga, or the leave of the sacred college. 

Believe me, the influence of faith will illustrate 
all this mystery, and reduce even these impostures 



SIBYLLINE INFLUENCE. 429 

to a simple truth. Without it, only the grossest 
superstition would believe that sympathy would 
thus " take the wings of the morning," and impart 
to a mind that was thinking at our antipodes a con- 
sciousness of our own sentiments ; for this would 
be a revival of that blind credulity which, in the 
darker ages, was reposed in the superhuman agen- 
cy of magic and of witchcraft. 



SIBYLLINE INFLUENCE. 

" She was a charmer, and could almost read 
The thoughts of people." — Othello. 

Ida. As you unfold the wonders of the mind, 
Evelyn, the secrets of many splendid mysteries 
shine forth in the light of your truth ; and the wis- 
dom of " charmed rings," " blessed brambles," and 
amulets and talismans, fades before the precepts of 
a purer faith. Yet is there no witchcraft in your 
philosophy 1 You have, methinks, absolved As- 
trophel from spells and dark hours, for, in the soft- 
ened lustre of his eye, I see a light more holy than 
its wonted flash of divination. 

Cast. You have more faith in his conversion 
than I have, Ida ; for, lo ye now ! on a mossy 
stone in Tintern lay this sable velvet pouch, which, 
from its mystic 'broidery, might be the lost treas- 
ure of a Rosicrucian cabalist. 

" There's magic in the web of it ; 
A sibyl that had number'd in the world 
The sun to make two hundred compasses, 
In her prophetic fury sew'd the work." 

And here is a scroll of vellum folded within it. 
Listen, and you shall hear the pencillings of some 
unhappy student, benighted in the mazes of the 
Cabala. 

*' The eye of modern philosophy may wink at 



430 SIBYLLINE INFLUENCE. 

the wisdom of occult sciences, and sorcerers and 
magicians, necromancers and Rosicrucians, caba- 
lists and conjurers, astrologers and soothsayers, 
Philomaths, Drows, and Oreades, wizards and 
witches, and warlocks, and sibyls and gipsies, may 
be, in its estimation, a mere legion of ciphers. Yet 
faith hath been long and firmly lavished on the art 
of divination by the learned and mighty men in all 
ages. The Chaldean, who read the stars, was the 
coryphaeus and the type ofrsuperhuman knowledge ; 
the magi of Persia and Egypt, and other Orient 
lands, followed in his wake. The venerable Her- 
mes Trismegistus was surrounded by his proselytes 
in the year of the world 2076 ; and Apollonius, and 
Zoroaster, and Pythagoras, and, in later ages, John 
of Leyden, Roger Bacon, and other learned mys- 
tagogues, have imbibed a more than mortal wis- 
dom from the aspect of those starry lights which 
gem the vaulted firmament, while the luminous 
schools of Padua, and Seville, and Salamanca were 
rich in the records of occult and mystic learning. 
Emperors, and kings, and ministers, who ruled the 
destiny of mighty nations, have believed. Wallen- 
stein was all confiding; Richelieu and Mazarin (as 
Morin writes) retained soothsayers as a part of 
their household ; Napoleon studied with, implicit 
faith his book of fate ; and Canute, obedient to his 
confidence in the virtue of relics, directed his Ro- 
man agent to buy St. Augustine's arms for one hun- 
dred silver talents and one of gold. 

" Nay, what saith divinity itself] Glanville, the 
chaplain of King Charles II., affirms, in his ' Sadu- 
cismus Triumphatus,' that ' the disbeliever in a 
witch must believe the devil gratis ;' and Wesley 
said that ' giving up witchcraft was, in fact, giving 
up the Bible.' Now, as the Chaldean sophs were 
divided into three classes — 1. The ' Ascaphim,' or 



SIBYLLINE INFLUENCE. 431 

charmer ; 2. The ' Mecascaphim,' or magician ; 3. 
The ' Chasdim,' or astrologer — so the legion of mod- 
ern witches was composed of a mystic triad, dis- 
tinguished by colours that were a symbol of their 
influence on our mortal frame. The black witch 
could hurt, but not help ; the white could help, but 
not hurt ; the gray could both help and hurt." 

Ida. My own Castaly, have pity on us. Evelyn 
may unrol the coils of this unholy manuscript if he 
will. 

I do believe this lettered clerk has, in some un- 
happy hour, wandered by the ruins of the Seven 
Churches in the valley of Glendalough, and there, 
creeping up to St.Keven's bed, that hangs over the 
gloomy waters of its lake, has won the fatal gift of 
Catholic magic — or perchance he has sworn alle- 
giance with Faust and Friar Bacon. 

Astr. If an Oxford student must kneel at the 
shrine of a fair lady, he will whisper this confes- 
sion. In exploring the treasures of black-letter 
romance, he revelled among the occult mysteries, 
slighting that pure analysis of nature which is the 
essence of all philosophy. The legends of Regi- 
nald Scott, De Foe, Glanvil, and Wanley, were the 
companions of his pillow ; and thus, in poring over 
the legends of enchantment, he was himself en- 
chanted, and contemplated a wondrous history of 
witchcraft, where Sir Walter himself had failed. 
Let me have light penance, and I promise in the 
simple and beautiful light of nature alone to read 
her wonders, and if I dare, to study astrology in 
those planet eyes which look so mildly on their 
proselyte. 

Ida. Or, rather, as the magi of old, you will burn 

your books of divination ; and, like Friar Bacon, 

who broke the rare glass which showed him things 

* fifty miles off, you will study divinity, and become 

a pious anchorite. 



432 SIBYLLINE INFLUECNE. 

Cast. I am happy that you abandon the dark 
and dooming spells of the magus and the witch, 
Astrophel, for witchcraft is the unholy opposition 
of a demon to the Deity. Yet in your fate I read 
my own. But censure not the poetry of that inno- 
cent romance that lights up the legends of the 
berry-brown sibyl, whether she be a tirauna prowl- 
ing in the streets of Madrid, or a gipsy perched 
upon the heath-brow of Norwood, for theirs are 
happy prophecies. Yet if, like Astrophel, I am to 
be the slave of philosophy, let me at least make " a 
dying and a swan-like end." 

It was among the heath- valleys, where nature lay 
in wild repose around the place of my birth, that 
I first met the glance of a gipsy's eye. On the 
northern side of that beautiful sand-hill in Surrey, 
that rears its purple and turret-crowned crest be- 
tween the chalk hills and the weald, there is a 
green and bosky glen, the " Valley Lonesome." 
Along the waste of Broadmoor, that spreads be- 
tween the brow of Leith Hill and the Roman camp 
of Anstie-bury, comes rippling down the crystal 
streamlet of the Till, which, blending with a tor- 
rent that leaps from a lofty sand rock, steals away 
amid mosses, and cardamines, and cuckoo flowers, 
now gliding between its emerald banks, now swell- 
ing into a broader sheet beneath the beach woods 
of Wotton, the ancient seat of the Evelyns. There 
the willows dip their silver blossoms, and the vio- 
let, almost hidden beneath them, fills the air with 
sweetness. There the wild brier wreathes in light 
festoons its tiny roses, and the passion flower, en- 
twining its luxuriant tendrils around the aspen and 
the sycamore, hangs its beautiful blue stars in rich 
profusion. And there, among the boughs of lofty 
elms r whose shadows in the early morning darken 
the casements of TilUngbourne, a colony of rooks 



SIBYLLINE INFLUENCE. 433 

hang their woody nests ; and the murmurs of the 
ringdove, nestling within the woods of Wotton 
and the Rookery, are heard in the golden noon 
and sunset of June, floating around this leafy par- 
adise. 

It was on such an eve that my thoughts had fa- 
ded into slumber ; and when my eyelids oped, 
there was a form of imbrowned beauty before me, 
so wild, yet so majestic, that Cleopatra, in the garb 
of an Egyptian slave-girl, might have stolen upon 
my sleep : so scant of clothing, so lovely of form 
and feature, she was like an almond-flower upon a 
leafless branch. Her expression was full of beau- 
tiful contrasts, for, while her eaglet eye went into 
my being, there was a languid smile on her ruddy 
lip, as she were about to syllable my own destiny ; 
and, indeed, she did unfold to me many things 
which have been most strangely worked out and 
verified in my life. I wept at some of these fore- 
tellings, and she said, " Tears were the pearls that 
gem the rose-leaves of life." I smiled at others, 
and she said, " Smiles were the sunlight that warm- 
ed their swelling leaflets into beauty." 

Throughout that summer night, when all were 
sleeping save two romantic girls, she unfolded to 
me the secrets of her tribe, and a mine of mysteries 
learned from a Bohemian Maugrabee. She told 
me how and why the Druids, when the moon was 
six days old, cut the mistletoe with a golden knife ; 
how the vervain was gathered with the left hand 
at the rising of the dog-star ; and the lunaria was 
valueless if not picked by moonlight; how the 
roan-wood, and the banyan seedling, and the four- 
leaved shamrock, bore a charm in their tender 
leaves against every ill of life. In nature, she said, 
there is no bane without its antidote, were the in- 
tellect of man ripe for its discovery. There are 
28 Oo 



434 SIBYLLINE INFLUENCE. 

corals and green jaspers, carved into the forms of 
dragons and lizards, hung round an infant's neck 
for the cure of an ague ; the crimson-spotted helio- 
tropium, to stanch a flow of blood; a wrapper of 
scarlet cloth, to mitigate the virulence of smallpox ; 
the blue flannel, nine times dyed, to allay the pains 
of rheumatism ; and the magic word Abracadabra, 
to soothe the disorders of a nerve. And, above 
all, that wondrous iveapon-salve of sympathy, which 
once healed on the instant the wound of Ulysses, 
and that which the dainty Ariel gave to Miranda 
to charm Hippolito to life and health, and that 
with which the lady of Branxholme salved the bro- 
ken lance when William of Deloraine was healed. 

It will be long ere from my memory fade this 
vision of Charlotte Stanley. In pity, Evelyn, leave 
me this one romance of my young life — the sheet 
and taper, nay, the ducking-stool for the witch, if 
you will, but deign to bestow one smile upon the 
gipsies. 

Remember the story of the Sibylline Tables. 
If Sextus Tarquin had not frowned on the Roman 
gipsy, she had not burned six of those precious vol- 
umes, which, from the massive cabinets of stone 
made to enclose the three that were preserved, 
prove that the Roman thought them priceless. One 
smile, Evelyn, for my sibyl. 

Ev. Not in memory of the Sibylline Tables, but 
for your own sake, dear Castaly. Although the 
innocence of your nut-brown sibyl is not so clear, 
and I am somewhat jealous, too, of that white ma- 
gic of hers, which hath won the belief of so many 
minds the reverse of illiterate, who, from the Chal- 
dean even to Bacon and William Lilly, have 
spurned philosophy, and even divinity, and pinned 
their faith upon a gipsy's sleeve, and doted on the 
inspiration of an astrologer. 



SIBYLLINE INFLUENCE. 435 

Ida. Forgetful, it would seem, that the wicked 
king of Babylon found the devout Daniel, and Han- 
aniah, and Michael, and Azariah, ten times better 
than all his magi and astrologers. 

These are the antiquaries who possess the last 
relic of the true cross, or the last morsel of Shaks- 
peare's mulberry, of which last bit there may be 
about ten thousand ; such are they who would pen 
learned theses on the disputed place of sepulture 
of St. Denys, and determine the question, too, al- 
though one of his heads is in the Cathedral of Bam- 
berg, another in the church of St. Vitus in the castle 
of Prague ; one of his hands in a chapel at Munich ; 
one of his bodies, minus one hand, in the keeping 
of the monks of Saint Emmeram at Regensberg, 
while the monks of Saint Denys possess another, 
his head being preserved m the third shrine of the 
treasury in their cathedral. These may be inno- 
cent follies, but superstition, alas ! will not always 
stop here ; fanaticism soon descends to self-inflic- 
tion or to cruelty, and in that moment it becomes 
a black stain on the heart of man. Yet even for 
the tortures of the Inquisition (so exquisite that we 
might believe them the suggestions of a devil) the 
J esuit Macedo has put forth this profane justifica- 
tion : that the bloody tribunal was first instituted 
by the Deity in the condemnation of Cain and the 
bricklayers of Babel. 

Ev. Such was the trial of ordeal instituted for 
the test of innocence. Among the Anglo-Saxons, 
as all the chronicles of their history will show, this 
mode of trial prevailed ; as in the ordeals of the 
Cross, of boiling water, and of the hot iron ; of cold 
water, or drowning; and of the corsned, or consecra- 
ted cake. Equally savage was the trial for mur- 
der, so prevalent in Scotland, especially the insti- 
tution of their Bahr-recht, or " Right of the bier.'* 



436 SIBYLLINE INFLUENCE. 

Among the " decisions" of Lord Fountainhall you 
may read of legends almost incredible. Philip, 
the son of Sir James Standfield, was executed be- 
cause, in lifting the corpse of his murdered father 
from its bier, blood welled forth from his wound ; 
and the Laird of Auchindrane was tortured be- 
cause a corpse chanced to bleed on the approach 
of a little girl, who, I believe, was merely one of 
his domestics. 

But, waving these profanations, the relics of a 
darker age, let me have a word with Astrophel on 
parting. The seeming fulfilment of many a sibyl- 
line prophecy is perfectly clear as to its source. 
There may be coincidence, as in the dream ; or 
faith and inducement may impart an energy of ac- 
tion, which may itself work a wonder, or accom- 
plish that end which is referred to a special power. 

At the siege of Breda, in 1625, when fatigue and 
abstinence had welmigh reduced the garrison to 
prostration and despair, the Prince of Orange prac- 
tised this pious fraud on his soldiers : he pretend- 
ed to have obtained a charmed liquor, so concen- 
trated that (on the principles of homoeopathy) four 
drops would saturate a gallon of water with resto- 
rative virtues ; and with so much skill was this ad- 
ministered by the physicians, that a general restora- 
tion was speedily effected. 

You remember, Astrophel, the temptation of 
Diocletian. From Flavius Vopiscus we leam that 
he was paying the Druidess of Brabant, with whom 
he lodged. " When I am emperor," he said, " I 
will be more generous." " Nay," said the Druid- 
ess, "you shall be emperor when you have killed 
the boar." He hunted and killed boars incessant- 
ly, but the purple .was not offered to him. At 
length the Emperor Numerianus was murdered by 
Arrius Aper. This was the eventful moment, and, 



SIBYLLINE INFLUENCE. 437 

transfixing the heart of Aper with his sword, he 
said, "I have slain the boar!" and the imperial 
crown was his. 

Is not this, too, the counterpart of that seeming 
prophecy of the Weird Sisters which made Mac- 
beth a murderer and a king 1 

There was an enchanted stone at Scone, in Scot- 
land, the palladium of Scottish liberty, for it was 
believed that the lord of that spot on which the 
stone lay should bear sovereign sway. King Ed- 
ward bore this talisman away in triumph, and Scot- 
land, depressed by its loss, became a vassal of the 
English crown. 

And this faith may invest the merest trifle with a 
spell. Sir Matthew Hale was presiding in his court 
on the trial of a witch. She had cured many dis- 
eases by a charm in her possession, and the evi- 
dence seemed conclusive of her guilt. But when 
the judge himself looked on this charm, behold ! it 
was a scrap of paper, inscribed with a Latin sen- 
tence, which, in default of money, he himself, while 
on the circuit, had given many years before, in a 
merry mood, to mine host, by way of reckoning. 

Among the many analogies to this story in an- 
cient times, there was the potent poison-charm or 
antidote of Mithridates, king of Pontus. Its effect 
was supreme. And what its composition % twenty 
leaves of rue, one grain of salt, two nuts, and two 
dried figs ! 

Now you will remember that the wizard and the 
ministers of these charms, even among savages, 
were also their physicians, and, among pagans and 
papists, their priests. It is clear that the sensitive- 
ness of mind and body under disease, when the first 
were consulted, and under the influence of super- 
stitious fear, instilled by the priesthood, rendered 
them impressible to the most trifling causes. 
Oo 2 



438 SIBYLLINE INFLUENCE. 

Even in minds of superior natural energy, from 
the instilment of superstitious ideas in infancy, a 
blind faith will often become paramount. Such a 
mind, and so influenced, was Byron's ; and on such 
a faith he once stole an agate bead from a lady, 
who had told him it was an antidote to love. It 
failed : had it not, Byron might have been a happi- 
er man, but the world would have been 'reft of po- 
esy, the brightest, yet the darkest that ever flashed 
on the heart and mind of man. 

Sir Humphrey Davy, you may recollect, " knew 
a man of very high dignity who never went out 
shooting without a bittern's claw fastened to his 
button-hole by a riband, which he thought ensured 
him good luck. 

To illustrate the innocence of your gipsy, Casta- 
ly, hear this story. 

"About forty years ago, a young lady, afterward 
Mrs. W , rallied her companions aloud for lis- 
tening to the predictions of an itinerant gipsy, when 
the latter malignantly threatened her to beware of 
her first confinement. She was shortly afterward 
married ; and, as the period of her peril approach- 
ed, it became evident to her friends that the re- 
membrance of the wizard malediction began to 
fasten upon her spirits. She survived her, time 
only a few days ; and the medical attendants, who 
were men of eminence, stated it as their opinion 
that mental prepossession alone could be admitted 
as the cause of her death, not one unfavourable cir- 
cumstance having occurred to explain it. 

"And some melancholy illusion of this nature 
induced fatality in the case of another lady (Mrs. 
S.), who, according to the statement of the vener- 
able Mr. Cline, reluctantly submitted to the re- 
moval of: a small tumour in her breast. Unexpect- 
edly, and without any apparent cause, she died on 



SIBYLLINE INFLUENCE. 439 

the morning following the operation. It was then 
for the first time ascertained that she had prognos- 
ticated her death, and the impression that she should 
not survive had taken so strong a possession of her 
mind, that her minutest household arrangements 
were preconcerted, as appeared by the papers found 
in her cabinet." 

I believe that many modem instances of gradual 
and almost imperceptible decay may be referred 
to the influence both of melancholy prophecies and 
visions on the mind, although their agency may be 
unsuspected, and as obscure as that of the poison- 
ous herbs of the Thessalian Erichtho, or the sor- 
ceress of Neapolis, or the aqua tofana of the Ital- 
ians. 

And superstitious fear may induce a sudden 
death. Alfred, a nobleman, was one of the con- 
spirators against the Saxon Athelstan. To justify 
himself from the accusation, he went to Rome, that 
he might make oath of his innocence before John, 
the pope. On the instant he took the oath he was 
convulsed, and in three days died. 

Then as to the language of the stars : as the 
phrenologist is much indebted to the principles of 
Lavater in forming his estimate of character, so I 
believe of the astrologer. The aspect of thence 
is not always disregarded in his prophecy, while 
he seems to observe only the aspect of the stars. 
And although there is often a very strange precis- 
ion in his guesses, yet there was once a curious 
incident in my own presence, from which we may 
learn something of this secret. On a visit to a 
learned astrologer (who might rest his fame on an- 
other art in which he is so eminent), our fortunes, 
past and future, were told with extreme minute- 
ness, and, I confess, with many coincidences of 
former times. One was reminded by the seer of 



440 SIBYLLINE INFLUENCE. 

a state of deprivation which he endured in the year 
18 — , in the Mediterranean. The officer remem- 
bered in that year being becalmed in a voyage to 
Malta, and, under a sultry sky, with parching thirst, 
enduring the want of water for many days. This 
was conclusive of the fidelity of the planets, until 
we discovered that the horoscope was imperfect, 
for the officer had given to the astrologer the wrong 
date of his birth. 

Cast. And this, sir, is your Philosophy of Mys- 
tery 1 Oh for the forethought of my sibyl, that I 
might leam my own fate for listening to this trea- 
son against the throne of fancy, on the steps of 
which I have so long offered up my homage — this 
ruthless spoliation of her dreamy kingdom ! 

Ev. Let me for once play the sibyl, fair Casta- 
ly, and whisper the penalty in your ear — 

Ida. A lesson in natural philosophy ; and the apt 
scholar, as I read it on her cheek, has in a moment 
learned it all by heart, o'ershadowing all her bright 
visions of earth and its romances. 

Ev. What marvel that a daughter of earth should 

be so apt in its philosophy ] 

" For half her thoughts were of its sun, 
And half were of its show'rs." 

But it is not so easy to shake the throne of fancy, 
or to lay the genius of romance. He will ever 
wave his wand of enchantment over the human 
mind. The poet will still build his air-castles, and 
the ghost-seer indulge in his wild visions of non- 
entity. 

The wonders of creation will still affect us, ac- 
cording to the quality of intellect or genius, or the 
constitution or cultivation of the mind. The poor 
Indian will still " see God in clouds, and hear him 
in the wind," and the untutored rustic be startled 
by the shadow of a shade. To him the slightest 






IBYLLINE INFLUENCE. 44J 

change in the regular course of nature will still be 
a special miracle : thunder, the awful voice of Di- 
vine reproof; lightning, the flashes of Divine dis- 
pleasure ; the scintillations of the aurora, the spec- 
tral forms of contending armies; and the comet 
foretel the wreck of mighty empires. Against this 
untutored devotion I would not breathe a thought • 
it^is the voice of the Deity speaking to the °sav- 

But it is the privilege, the duty of intellect to 
think more deeply of the physiology of nature, 
and to learn from the physical sciences its real 
utility m the grand scheme of the creation. 

Philosophy rising from the sublime study of 
these beautiful phenomena, regards them as the 
pure effect of those elemental laws by which the 
integrity of the universe is preserved. And what 
ought this philosophy to teach us ? Not the su 
perstition of the bigot, for the age of special mir- 
^?£J%£™*' P ast ' ** ! he Fide of the 



ftt„i;„* u j- r — ,, ' K ' iuL lua P llcle °t the 
fatalist, who refers all to chance and necessity ; not 
the mama of the astrologer, who pl ume s himself 
on his prophetic wisdom, and presumes to inter- 
pret to the letter the mysterious voice of his Crea- 
tor; but that true wisdom which threw over Boyle, 

^lAr 1 Newton the mant]e ° f h >-% 

The autumn floods had descended from the 
mountains of Gwent • the banks of the meander! 
ing Wye were desolate, and her woods leafless- 

£&£f of Tintem was "* -*-?S 

sW^ bee " de 1 c , i r ded , that ^ the summer sun 
shone again on Wyndcliff, the wanderers should 
ZT the , ^""^ alleys that lay beneath i C) n 
memory of happy hours ; but, ere this was fulfilled 



442 SIBYLLINE INFLUENCE. 

changes manifold had come over their destiny, from 
which might be fashioned a true love-story. 

For Astrophel, Ida had unconsciously worked a 
spell of natural witchcraft, and his wild thoughts 
were ever chastened by the pure light of her de- 
votion ; and Evelyn almost confessed to Castaly 
that there might be a sort of animal magnetism. 
He has neglected the study of the atomic theory 
for the contemplation of the animated atoms that 
play around his domestic hearth ; and the heart 
and life of Castaly, a poetry in themselves, have 
since interwoven many a blushing flower on the 
classic pages of his philosophy. 



THE END. 



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